Mama was only 29 that year. It was her first school. She had been going summers to the University of Utah to get her certification to teach while Max and I had spent a long lonely summer with Grandma on the old Vermillion ranch. We got so lonely we tried to make an airplane out of an old hayrake. Surely that contraption would fly us to Salt Lake City to see our Mama.

But when it failed, Max got Uncle Con's new hardtwist lariat from the shed. We roped a pig. We would ride the pig to see Mama. We almost got dragged off the fence into the pig mire but we let go of the rope just in time. Then came the awful confessing to Uncle Con, and having him retrieve his soiled rope from the pig's neck.

When I go back to Fruita (that's what Capitol Reef National Park will always be to me) I sit high on the hillside on the trail to Cohab Canyon, just above the old Pendleton barn. And listen to those echoes of the past – Uncle Cass calling from his fruit ranch up the valley to his neighbor, Dewey Gifford, down close to the confluence of the river and the creek. They had no need for telephones. Their voices carried the three-quarters of a mile and echoed in the ledges like thunder. And I can still see and hear Mama stepping out on the little porch of the schoolhouse, ringing the hand bell to call in her little flock – a dozen or so boys and girls, 15 years on down.