I picture her next to my sons, this nameless little girl jumping from rock to rock across the river. I’m impressed to witness her moves more agile and certain than my own children’s. We read of her on the slanted sign posted beside the still-standing remains of her neighbors’ cabins — perhaps even her own.

It told of her community and their perseverance — long, unthinkable winters spent cutting timber, sending it with spring’s thaw down the river to Wyoming. Working alongside the bachelors were a handful of fathers. Their families lived here at the family quarters settlement. My boys explore the skeletal log remains of their homes.

She played in these chilly mountain waters one hundred years ago. Perhaps she ran up and down the grassy hillside collecting wildflowers on her way. The sign allotted only a few sentences to her life, enough to place her in my imagination.

“A young girl kept a journal…” No name, only a record of her thoughts. In that journal, the sign went on to explain, she wrote of her mother teaching her and her siblings how to read and do math.

A way of life few of us could begin to grasp, and what did she give priority to in the pages of her journal? Education from her mother.

I picture her now, this mama bearing harsh winters, a tiny cabin swelling with children and chatter, her husband braving bear and frostbite — all of them praying for spring’s thaw to hasten. I wonder — along with her contextual challenges I cannot begin to measure — what discouragements she and I would share in common. Were we to meet in this meadow and sit beside the river while our children splashed and we shared the real and raw struggles of teaching our children, at which points would our experiences intersect?

This mama and I share a bond stretching our century separation — both of us shouldering the education of our children. Did she wonder, as I often ask, am I doing enough? Did she battle the fears of selling her children short? Did she feel acutely the tension of work, play, and rest? Did she feel in one moment the exhilaration and wonder of training up her children, only in the next moment to question every ounce of her resolve?

The Little House On the Railroad Tie Settlement scene looks notably different from my own — from many of ours. Perhaps field trips and curriculum hold a prominent place in the teaching nowadays, or maybe it’s dad who facilitates the education while mom is building her career. Maybe there is some virtual learning to supplement lessons, trips to the library, homeschool co-ops, documentaries and devices. However different it looks, when any of us take on the education of our children, there are common underlying, unshakeable struggles. It is a brave endeavor, one which none of us feel particularly ready or equipped for. It’s a calling which humbles us each and every morning, then again in the afternoon, once more in the evening.

“They will thank you for this one day.” A mama gave me these words in a parking lot last fall. My boys clamored into the SUV after their homeschool co-op and she, one of my oldest son’s teachers, stopped me. Perhaps she caught the weary look painted across my face. “My children are grown,” she looked me in the eyes as she spoke, “they thank me for homeschooling them.”

Her assurance ripples all these months forward, echoed in the sign’s inscription. A young girl’s account of her mother’s efforts. An education cherished.

My boys hit sword-sticks together with river water lapping at their ankles. This space where science become theology — where spring’s thaw has left summer’s steady current — the seasons and water systems, and the vegetation and wildlife supported by it all teaches us much of our Creator. Three boys learn the art of play and fellowship and strategy as the wonder of creation leaves its mark on their spirits the same way it did on a young girl one hundred years before them. They read a stanza of her story on the sign, envision her life amongst the felled cabins, see her playing in the river — an education cherished. Perhaps not much has changed, after all.