Mary Louise loved the drive through Logan Canyon in the spring. Spring was a wonderful time to be eighteen. She had just finished her course at Brigham Young College in Logan three days ago. A group of school friends had loaded up a wagon with picnic goodies. They were driving up to Tony Grove lake for a party. Many would be leaving tomorrow for homes and farms outside of Logan. She would be staying on. Mary's father had just moved his family from Richmond to Logan to be closer to his college girls and to get more work for his plumbing trade. She had just started a job at the Union Knitting Mill. She thought her wage would be more helpful to the family than her help with the new home or the children. Crysta, her oldest sister, had the household well organized. She had been the "boss" since their mother died six years ago.
Mary was determined to enjoy her independence while she could. Crysta's missionary would be coming home soon and Mary was the next in line to take charge of the household and five younger children unless Edna, her younger sister, could be persuaded to take charge. Edna was almost sixteen, nearly the age Crysta had been when she took over. Mary did have a good job, and then there was that intriguing manager of the Knitting Mills, George Skidmore...
Well, time would work out the details. Today she just wanted to enjoy the June wild flowers. Bluebells, buttercups, columbine, wild mustard, and Indian paintbrush all seemed as happy to see the spring sun as she was. She wished Lelia could have lived to see the flowers. Her next older sister had died of consumption last month when the snow still covered the mountain flowers. She had been sick all winter and most of the spring. Well, today she would see it all for the both of them.
She loved the flash of the tall white trunks of the quaking aspens against the green mountains. They are the "mothers of the pines," someone had told her. They grow faster than pine or blue spruce. Their trembling leaves furnish mulch for the evergreens, which ¼eventually crowd them out. Mary thought about the spring grass and the fast white trunks of aspen against the slow dark green of pine. She decided the spring mountains were trying to tell her something, something hidden in shades of green.
Mary's feelings were fictionalized from the known facts of this time in her life. Later on in her life Mary demonstrated to her children many times her deep love of the mountains, Tony Grove, and flowers. She was very knowledgeable about wild and domestic flowers. Her son, James B. ¼Skidmore, remembers her explanation of the aspens being the "mothers of the pines." The family details came from a personal account of Wallace Clinton Burnham as dictated to his daughters on April 29, 1927, and also from a life sketch of Wallace Clinton Burnham written by his granddaughter, Zina W. Peterson, in 1972. She obtained the information from his autobiography and from interviews with his daughters Edna Burnham and Crysta B. Woodland. Additional background material came from: Joel E. Ricks, ötory of a Valleyòache Valley Centennial Commission (Logan: Deseret News Publishing Co., 1958).