Mountain Born

"Old Benj had once said, 'A man must have a care to what he puts in his mind, for when he's alone on a hillside and draws it out, he'll want treasures to be his company, not regrets.'"

What a great point made by children's author Elizabeth Yates in her Newberry Honor book, Mountain Born.

This little book contains some of those treasures, I think. While faith in the God of the Bible is only in the background much of the time, we continually see wonder at His creation while learning lessons both from the beauty and the fallen-ness of it.



"The year had hinges on which it hung, and every hinge had something to do with the sheep; but that was the life on Andrew's farm and the living for his family, and it was right that the sheep should mark it for them."

Old photos: 

• Feeding some of our bottle lambs with Maren. (Apparently I had already found a book I couldn't put down all those years ago!) 

• When young, we had the privilege of learning to process our wool from raw, dirty fleeces to usable, if rough, yarn.

How fun through this book to spend a couple years on a sheep farm once again with delightful, young Peter! The first year is the time when little Peter is just old enough to begin helping with a man's work. A special bottle-lamb gives him much more than a new, wool coat while he grows and learns from his parents and "Old Benj."

"As they drew nearer the cottage, the sound of the spinning wheel came out to meet them, drawing them toward it with its soft whirring croon. Peter thought, as he heard it, that if one could catch the sound of time going by -- days and seasons into years -- it might be like that of the wheel."

Then we skip ahead a few years. The worn coat is getting too small, and the pet lamb is growing older. There are more lessons to be learned in a gentle, yet true-to-life way.

While I admittedly may have shrunk from this book when young because, yes, animals do die... it is dealt with in a gentle, matter-of-fact way, and I can recommend this little book that I recently borrowed from my nephew. I'm sure his parents will begin reading it to him well before he can understand the half of it, which is great! (He already heard Robinson Crusoe!) I am glad he can grow up with stories we never knew of at that age, as well as our old favorites.