Pioneer Woman     She lost him to the fur trade, explorations through the passage, work on plain and prairie where he could, wars and skirmishes as in lands of old, promises of gold in mountains harsh and far. Only through her a hearth and home endured. She kept the fields and dwindling stock, reared babies to be men who made cities that would change her untamed landscape, beauty of new land. Women built this nation with determined duty, unsung - except in ballads of the heart, or wilderness, where her spirit lives.       ©2008 Katherine L. Gordon (from Myth Weavers,  Serengeti Press.)