I first read Ivan when I was laying bricks for a living. I never appreciated his description of laying up blocks in sub zero weather until I was stuck doing the same thing in the winter of '77 in Fairmont WVA. It was bitter cold and we could only lay one block at a time before the mortar froze.
There was one description that Solzhenitysn wrote - I think it was in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" - but I could be wrong....this description really remained with me.
I'll paraphrase it....
A group of ragged hagggard half starved prisoners were walking with their guards through the snow in Siberia for several miles on their way to a day of debilitating labor in the extreme cold - and then they would have to walk back again to a cold barracks and watery soup. Everyone of them was totally miserable, facing death at the hands of their guards - they were in the last stages of deprivation. Then through the trees comes a small herd of deer - stunningly beautiful against the snow and the forest. Their sleek bodies, their grace.
The people stopped - both prisoners and guards - to admire the marvelous creations of G-D's natural world. And then the animals,leaping and running, disappeared through the trees - and the people went back to the h*ll they had created for themselves.
It was a stunning reminder that the beauty of the world as created still exists though we ourselves all too often subject ourselves to a human-created h*ll.