May 4, 2025
Nebraska is a concept. A place of being. A world of its own. The miles of prairie, mile after mile, footstep after footstep, where everything is a golden-green horizon, and troubled tornado-looking sky, or just bright blue on a mild day. I love the quiet here, quiet except for a meadowlark’s trill and my family’s faint footsteps following the trail of fur trappers. I can see them- a ghostly picture of hundreds of white covered wagons pulled by exhausted oxen. Exhausted people, women, men, and children were walking alongside because there was no room in the wagon except for the sick, elderly, and infants. In my minds-eye, I see them-their faces- haggard, tortured, suffering, tired to the bone. Why did they do this? How could they trudge over 1,000 miles with the burdens they carried and challenges they faced, the deep mud, the rivers swollen and overflowing with snow melt from the Rocky Mountains? Many drowned in those rivers. Many were killed by overturned wagons. Cholera was always waiting.
These folks are symbolic of your ancestors and mine. Whether they came from Europe and took this journey, or from Vietnam as boat people, or from South America over the Darien Gap, or from Russia and the Ukraine. Our families have many stories, many trails they followed to get here. And, it was almost always harrowing. Today, this is what you and I have in common: courageous, valiant ancestors who believed strongly in a vision and worked hard to achieve it. Many died trying. Whether we agree with their religious or political beliefs, their cultural practices, and even their motives, we owe deep respect and gratitude. I could not do what they did. I don’t have the mettle, the grit, or the raw courage. Of course, we are all descendants of Homo sapiens from Africa. Think of their long, hard journeys. Think also- our ancestors were all immigrants; how did the indigenous nations feel about our intrusions? I wish Donald Trump could explain his immigration policy to Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, or a thousand other tribal leaders. How did the Sioux, Apache, and Pottawattamie feel about my Mormon ancestors building trails and killing game on their lands?
Part of the legacy of the West is forgetting about the rights of other people, including the indigenous and those brought here through slavery.
Meanwhile, the puppies and I are enjoying the ride. The weather, extraordinary to me, has driven me to motels rather than camping in the cold, cold, vicious wind and tornadoes all around. I gave up the roughing it when I first got sick. Then the winds and tornadoes. We are now in the pattern of Holiday Inn Express and eating at the bar with the locals, which is great fun and highly entertaining. I am a natural at this life; I find my companions wonderful conversationalists and so very kind. They tell me great stories, yet aren’t very interested in mine. Fascinating to me that I seem to fit in. No one acts as if I am unusual, although I know puppies and I are. Doesn’t seem to matter to anyone.
The puppies have made a marvelous adjustment. They trust me, and all seems to be okay in their lives. We have a routine, and they are comfortable.
Red Cloud, Nebraska, is home to the fabulous storyteller, Willa Cather. I spent too much time in the Willa Cather Museum and bookstore. Bought a few books, which is my habit everywhere we go. Maisie and Ruffie led me down the red brick Webster Street with its red brick buildings on either side. A town of 750, there are several people shopping at the market, with its vast space not the space or feeling of Raley’s, Trader Joe’s, or Safeway.
This market is in a large, very old building that has been converted. Its ceilings are high; the aisle is wide. There is a pleasant dankness about the air -the old building smell. The feel of it is personal warmth and nostalgia. The young girls clerking look and act as any California girl their age would.
The National Willa Cather Prairie.
Late afternoon sun highlights the gold, wavy appearance of the grasses. The wind blowing through causes them to ripple like waves on an ocean. Cather Prairie is of undisturbed native grasses with light and dark hues. A dog would love to roll around and around in those billowy arms – so would I. The sod they form has a life of its own- a subterranean teeming world of bacteria, fungi, algae, mosses and cyanobacteria. There must be nematode worms and protozoans as well. Some of the roots go down as far as 10 feet. There are a variety of native grasses- big and little bluestem, sideoats grama, blue grams, Indian grass, and buffalo grass.
Fortunately, the city of Red Cloud brought its resources together to build a charming boutique hotel, which opened only days before I arrived. They renovated an original two-story with a basement and made it into a state-of-the-art showplace. We stayed there in luxury and spent hours reading parts of their Cather library.
Palisade, Nebraska
Obtaining her first teaching job, my mom brought my two brothers to Palisade after divorcing my father. I was only one year old, so I lived with my beloved grandparents in Laramie, Wyoming, for the first four years of my life. I began kindergarten, and my life with mom, Dee, and Stan in Palisade, a town of 300, which I loved very much. We walked the neighborhoods, had a good look at the two homes I lived in, and visited the community swimming pool where we spent all of our summer days. The school where Mom taught English, and where all three of us attended, housed students K-12. A stolid, 2 level brick building is still standing but in private hands. The city merged its school system with a nearby city, Waunita, and kids are bused there now. lI talked with a guy who lived across the street from the school. He is a nice, warm, tall, good-looking man who caught me up on the history of Palisade in the 75 years since I have been gone.
In 1948, Mom met Dale Horn, a local farmer who had lost his young wife to a cerebral hemorrhage. Dale became my stepfather. At this time, I acquired two new brothers, Bill and Larry. My family moved to California in 1950, the year of the Korean War. Mom thought that there would be more opportunities for her kids.
Grand Junction, North Platte, and Scottsbluff, Nebraska
The North Platte River was a major corridor for the overland trails. As best I could, I followed the river just as my ancestors did. I stopped at all of the historical markers and pioneer museums, which added to my knowledge of watersheds, interactions with American Indians, and the mingling of the peoples on the three trails. The contribution of the North Platte River to western migration had escaped me until now. It has become a part of my dreams. It braids its way through the Plains and carves out the landscape. It is a very shallow (platte) river and twists, turns, then twists back on itself. The banks are a riparian habitat somewhat like those along our American River.
Major landmarks in Western Nebraska used by the pioneers are Chimney Rock and Independence Rock.
Fort Bridger, Wyoming
May 4, 2025
The eastern part of the state is characterized by wide open plains, and the western part by the Rocky Mountains. The state is a high plateau with a mean elevation of 6,000 feet. Numerous mountain ranges break it and provide some of the most beautiful vistas I have ever seen. The Saints left the North Platte in Nebraska to follow the Sweetwater River in Wyoming. The Sweetwater got its name from an incident where trappers lost a packet of sugar into the river during a storm, the resulting water tasted sweet, hence the name. It is a very different river than the Platte- much narrower and deeper and composed of a main channel. It was along the Sweetwater that the Willie and Martin Handcart tragedy occurred when two groups of LDS were caught in severe winter storms, resulting in the loss of 220 lives due to starvation and exposure. The two most-read books of this disaster are Devil’s Gate by David Roberts (a non-Mormon) and The Price We Paid by Andrew Olsen. I viewed a video at the Visitor’s Center based on the account of the time written by a 13-year-old boy who survived. It captured men, women, and children walking barefoot through two feet of snow. It is a story used to promote the courage of the faithful by some and the arrogance and faulty decision-making by church leaders by others. The whole idea of handcart usage is highly controversial.
Of personal interest, my great-grandfather drove an oxen wagon for another Martin company the same year, a month earlier.
South Pass, Wyoming, is the point at which the three trails split to travel individually to Oregon for land, California for gold, and Utah for Zion. The South Pass was the easiest route through the Rocky Mountains, and I witnessed that as I drove along. However, the sky was crowded with dramatic black rainclouds with feathery projections ( rain and hail) reaching the ground. As I drove up a rise, it looked as if I were driving right into the clouds. Coming down some rises, the ridges were shadowed by the clouds and looked like a train moving across the highway before me.
Describing these vistas appropriately is impossible. But I will try. Imagine a scoop taken out of the high plateau with a trowel. The walls are curved, not straight up and down. The deep valley resulting is green with a ribbon of silver, the Sweetwater River, running through. Also, a brown dirt road snakes along. The lay of the land on the left is steep, grey-green with sagebrush. Imagine a comb running down that entire slope, dividing the land into hundreds of small ridges flowing down to the valley. That part is spectacular, yet the right side is even more so. There are five belts of color from top to bottom. The top belt is brown rock in palisade layers, beneath that a broad belt of green pinon pine. Beneath that, a smooth area of red sandstone topping a bright red, deeply eroded, rock strip. Beneath that, another layer of brown, grey-green rock/sagebrush sloping down and merging into the green valley. I hope that as I lay dying I will have that picture in my mind.