Harriet Fish was just twenty years old when she left San Francisco in 1906 to marry assayer George Backus and move with him to a rugged mining town perched high in Colorado's San Juan Mountains. It was a difficult life, in which groceries arrived by mule train, babies traveled in boxes on skis, and the high altitude made cooking (let alone breathing) a serious challenge. But Harriet's pluck, optimism, and humor shine in this sparkling memoir, as she looks back on her adventurous life as a mining wife in the western wilds.