LiterariLeigh

According to American Community Survey Reports from September 2011, workers took an average of 25.1 minutes to get to work. It's a 10 minute drive for me, which is nice. But I have a friend who commutes on the train for an hour, from western Connecticut to NYC, and an hour back. Even though he works on his laptop or reads, that seems like a lot of travel time to me.

Now I'd like you to consider what it would be like to have a horse for transportation. In Colorado. In the winter. In 1916. That was how Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood traveled over an hour to teach school each sunny, rainy, and snowy day for almost a year. Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden (Woodruff's granddaughter) chronicles the lives of these women, who came from Auburn, New York and were brought up in affluent families. They graduated from Smith College and spent some time living in Europe. As the two neared age 30 (still unmarried!), they wanted to use their education to some advantage and jumped at the chance to work as school teachers in the tiny town of Elkwood, Colorado. Letters home recorded a harrowing train journey, boarding with a hard working and kind family, snow on the bed in the morning, children on homemade skis or walking without proper coats or footwear, and people traveling miles and miles for any kind of entertainment and connection. Never complaining (at least not in the letters), they joined in and worked to help that community grow. There are a number of photographs available, and collected in an interesting slideshow. Very impressive ladies - what gumption!