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In January 1952, Aileen Kilgore was teaching forty-three fourth
graders at a public school in Northport, Alabama. Her life, filled
with lesson preparations, in- service meetings, countywide
meetings, and special projects, seemed grim, and she resolved to
change it.
	
    Remembering tales she'd heard of the Big Bend region in Texas,
she wrote to the school board at Alpine, applying for a position. To
her surprise an offer came back to teach at a new school within the
Big Bend National Park. She accepted.

   The young schoolteacher was at first overwhelmed by Big
Bend—the wildness, the limitless space, the isolation, and the
exuberant Texas children. But she soon came to love the area and
the people.

   During her first year at Panther Junction, she met one special
ranger named Art Henderson. When he was transferred to the Blue
Ridge Parkway that summer, there was a hole in her life. 

During her two years at Panther Junction, Aileen wrote long and
frequent letters—to her father working for the railroad at
Boligee, Alabama, to her mother and sister living in Brookwood,
Alabama, to her sisters in Tuscaloosa and San Diego, and finally,
the second year, to Art Henderson. Those edited letters make up
this book.

_________________________________________________________

AILEEN and ART HENDERSON now live in her family home in
Brookwood, Alabama. Arthur Henderson is a retired
naturalist/historian who spent several years with the National Park
Service. Aileen Kilgore Henderson is the author of Treasure of
Panther Peak, a juvenile adventure novel set in Big Bend National
Park.





Number Twenty-one: Chisholm Trail Series