Dart’s offering today is another of his extraordinarily descriptive letters. He paints a vivid word picture of the rugged scenery he can see from the train window. They have crossed through Utah and Nevada since sunrise. Dart is enchanted by some of what he sees, but he loathes other bits. “I’m writing this from somewhere in Nevada. Where in Nevada doesn’t matter worth a row of pins. I wouldn’t give you thirty cents for the whole huge state, with its endlessly rolling wastelands, millions of scrubby evergreens, and untold myriads of sagebrush bushes.”
But then he proceeds to write with reverence about the splendor of the distant purple mountains and the dazzling colors reflected in them.
He describes a typical desert town with its gray, weathered buildings, sparse population, and a smattering of horses and decrepit cars. He says the majority of businesses are either saloons, two-bit hotels or houses of ill-repute, in mute testimony to Nevada’s “wild and wicked character.”
He was thrilled to be able to experience first-hand an engineering marvel he’s read about for years – the Lucin Cutoff. This is a series of bridges and fills that cross the Great Salt Lake. He was impressed by the vast salt flats surrounding the lake, looking for all the world as though a heavy snow storm had just passed through the area. He describes the sparkling beauty of the lake itself and the ring of mountain peaks reflected in its calm waters.
To rely solely on my paraphrasing of this letter is to cheat yourself of Dart’s gift for relating the natural wonders he witnessed on this trip. This is one letter that’s worth the effort of reading the images of the original pages.
He ends the letter with a paragraph of such longing that I’m sure Dot could feel it as she held the pages in her hand. “When I’m with you, I’m enchanted into a sort of silence, and when I’m far away, I long for you to be here (or me there). It doesn’t seem possible that we’re so far apart. My love deepens with the distance, Dearest.”
It’s a good thing, because there will come a time when the distance between them is even greater than it is now.
Dot’s letter is short, but very sweet. She’s sad to learn he’s being sent so far away, but she feels they have both been so lucky that she chooses to focus on her gratitude instead of her disappointment. “If I weren’t sure of the way I felt about you, I s’pose I’d feel differently about it. But I am sure, and 3000 miles or 3000 years won’t make me change my mind.” It’s lovely to see her as adamant as Dart about the permanence of their relationship.
She adds, “When I look at the map, California seems very far away, and I get a big lump in my throat, but you’re still in the country and I thank God for that.”
She cautions him not to write to her when he should be studying because she doesn’t wan to interfere with anything that might delay his coming home.
