Harvey’s shy eyes were alight and full of ecstatic unbelief every time I looked at him. Mama was pleased and exuberant, playing the benevolent hostess. I was triumphant, young and extravagantly hopeful. It was thus I became Mrs. William H. Doe, Jr. As we left to go to the station I took a last, reflective look at Oshkosh, “The Sawdust City.” Factories and mills burst with the rattle and clang of industry. Across the two wagon bridges of the city moved streams of traffic. Here in the bustle and excitement of a frontier town I had been cradled. But now it was frontier no longer—and I was eager to follow that exciting horizon Westward. Although I was sorry to leave my family and home, I was breathless to be off. “Darling, now our life is really beginning,” Harvey whispered to me as we stood on the little open back platform of the train pulling away from the station. I leaned against him for support, and thrilled to the thought. We waved handkerchiefs to our family and friends as long as we could see them, shaking the rice from our clothes at the same time. Finally, laughing merrily when Oshkosh was no more than a blur in the distance, we turned into the train and took our seats in the coach. Outside the rolling, hilly country of Wisconsin was abloom. Green grassy fields and waving marshes were flying past—or at least we thought of our speed as flying. The little train really made not much more than fifteen miles an hour, I imagine. But it seemed to me, who had never ridden on a train before, that we were literally hurtling through space. “I love you, my sweet, beautiful little bride!” Harvey whispered passionately, pressing my hand and looking adoringly into my eyes. His words were like a song, sung to the rhythm and bounce of wheels along the tracks—an urgent, earthy obligato. “And I love you, darling Harvey.” Our honeymoon had begun—the world was fair, and all life lay before us—I couldn’t possibly describe the intoxication of that moment! After an arduous trip, steaming endlessly, it seemed, across prairie lands of the Great American Desert, we arrived in Colorado. My first glimpse of the Rockies, viewed from the train window one morning, did something to me I was never to get over. All the adjectives in the language have been used to describe that sight, by explorers, by learned travelers, by writers, and by humble people keeping diaries. And still it was an experience so important in my own life that I, too, must try. People have said they “rise up” suddenly—and so they do. But to me, on that bright, crisp morning, they seemed to have been let down from the sky, like a gigantic backdrop on the stage of the world, their colors of grey and red and startling white painted on by a Master Hand. They looked unreal, like an experience from another world, but at the same time an experience of such magnitude and importance that I must bow in worship before their granite strength and snow-white purity. “Aren’t they gorgeous?” Harvey asked.