Sometime in June many girls start on the journey to a saeter. The girls look forward to that day for weeks even though they will be very lonely up in the mountains. Anne and Hulda are sisters who go to a saeter each summer. Anne is only fourteen years of age and Hulda is seventeen. Sigrid, who is about the same age as Hulda, and Martha, who is much older, live on a farm not far from the farm where Anne and Hulda live. Anne, Hulda, Sigrid, and Martha take their cows to the same saeter. So the four girls live together for three months each summer. One summer, Anne, Hulda, Sigrid, and Martha started for the saeter on June 25. They live in a part of Norway that is far from a fjord or a railroad, so they had to travel on foot. They did not go alone, for there was too much to take to the saeter. Their older brothers went with them. The girls dressed in heavy brown khaki suits and high-topped shoes, walked ahead with the cows, the sheep, and the goats. The boys came behind them with horses loaded with food, churns, milk cans, bedding, and cooking vessels. At first they traveled along a main road and walking was easy. Only a few miles from their homes, they stopped for a week at a house near the road. The cows ate the grass off the mountain slopes near the house, and the boys planted potatoes on a patch on the mountainside which was level enough that crops would not be washed away. At the end of the week they again loaded the horses and started on the rest of their journey. To reach the high pastures, they must walk up a narrow zigzag road. The small dun-colored horses climb the paths carrying the bundles. What a lot of turns the road has! One mountain path has twenty-seven turns. Of course, the many turns make a longer road than a straight one would be, but the girls are glad for the zigzags. They make the road less steep and they follow the smoother paths. By the end of the day, the cattle reached their green pastures. And the girls opened the hut which was to be their home for almost three months. The hut was made of rough timber. It had a sod roof on which grew grass and small shrubs. The boys helped the girls clean the hut which had been closed for so many months. They unloaded the goods which the horses had carried up the mountain and put everything in place. In one corner of the one big room, they put the churn, the milk cans, and the tools. In another corner was a fireplace. On it they hung iron kettles on which the girls would cook their food and boil the milk to make cheese. On a table at one side of the room they put the crocks for the milk and on a shelf above the table, they placed the dishes. At one end of the room on wooden beds, they put the mattresses of straw and warm covers which look like small feather beds. The next morning the boys set out down the mountain again. They must return to help gather the grain and cut the grass on the farm. The girls are left alone with the cattle.