“I would like to go to Yellowstone Park, Father,” I replied, wiping my mouth with the corner of a napkin as I learned at the female academy. I looked him right in the eye.

You’d have thought I was seeking permission to move into an opium den. Father’s eyes widened and he came down on all four chair legs with a bang that made the underfootman wince.

“You can’t be serious,” Mother said. She glared at me for long moments until I felt myself shrinking under her well-bred scrutiny.

I glanced at Phil, but he had that mulish look in his eyes and his lips were set in a tight line. In the past year he had become addicted to those dime novels glorifying the West. (To be scrupulous, so had I.) He was quite serious in his attempt to get Out There.

You might be wondering how my brother was able to sneak such low literature past both the butler and more particularly, the underfootman, who had come to Christ in a camp meeting and never was any fun after that. I did the sneaking. I put the dust cover of Ovid’s Metamorphosis around the latest dime novel and brazenly carried it off past everyone. Our successful subterfuge more than justified the value of taking Latin.

In exchange for my role in the subterfuge, Phil did my trigonometry homework for me. That year, I never did exactly sparkle on examinations, but my homework shone with a light all its own. My instructor charitably decided I was one of those unfortunates struck dumb by the fear of a test; thus, I was able to pass the course and graduate.

So yes, in exchange for a year of trig help, Phil used me to get a trip to Western lands where those silly shoot-um-ups transpired. I was complacent and shallow; Phil was determined. And seriously, what was wrong with a few weeks in America’s first national park?

When I didn’t retract my startling request, the idea of Yellowstone Park started to soak in. All of us wandered the house for the next few days with thoughtful expressions. The more I considered the whole, harebrained scheme, the more attractive it became.

Our only previous experience with roughing it was a week spent in the Adirondacks, where we existed in canvas-walled tents and spent an extraordinary amount of time slapping mosquitoes. We took along our cook who burned everything, then resigned.

I had to admit that Yellowstone appealed to me. It had been declared a national park in 1872, the first of its kind, five years earlier by President Grant. To my knowledge, none of my friends had been there yet, a fact which heightened its attraction. I told you I was shallow.

To be frank, Yellowstone Park was as good as anywhere. For weeks I had been noisily objecting to Vassar to no good purpose. I really didn’t care where I went. I knew beyond any doubt that I would be under my mother’s thumb until I discovered a way to liberate myself.