The haven't changed, of course. it would take behomoth earth-movers to rid the landscape of these great chunks of mountains, not that we wouldn't do just that if some bloke discovered gold in them thar' hills, in which case we'd carve them up like Thanksgiving turkey.
Most of the Nebraska, alas, is fly-over country, even if you're in a mini-van. I can't count the times I've heard people talk about the place as "so endlessly boooooring." Because the landscape is featureless, coming up on these petrified beasts still invests the traveler with the kind of hope that the pioneers wrote about feeling when, here, they took to their diaries and journals.
They're really something. Still are. They're sandstone and hard clay, and they're changing, even as we speak, wearing away actually. But when you're coming up the trail, east to west, you can't help feeling, when they appear, still miles and miles away, that you're actually getting somewhere.
It was somewhere out here, those gargantuan monuments on the horizon, that I discovered Narcissa Whitman, wife of Marcus, the doctor, a couple most every Washington kid discovered in their fifth grade state history courses long ago. Marcus Whitman may well have been the first white man who who aimed his wagon at the west coast, believing--just believing--that he could bring a wagon full of whatever across the mountains--and then did it!
And his wife. Yes, he brought a woman with him. Can you imagine? In the early decades of the 19th century, the frontier, most American thought, was absolutely no place for a woman, at least no place for a lady. The very idea of a female in all that vastness was almost obscene, worse, inconceivable. It was wrong, not just thoughtless but abomination. No right-thinking man would be so thoughtless, so uncouth.
Marcus Whitman did, and Narcissa, who was his wife of one day when they left upstate New York for St. Louis, loved it, loved every rough-and-tumble minute of it. Not only did she make it through the plains, she tore through the mountains to arrive at the Oregon Territory, which then belonged, in great part, to the Great Brits. Not only did she make it, but she loved it, and told her family so in journals and letters that were published back east. She loved every minute of it.
My health was never better than since I have been on the river. I was weighed last week, and came up to 136 pounds. I think I shall endure the journey well - perhaps better than any of the rest of us.
Consider it a honeymoon--Marcus and Narcissa were newlyweds, after all, a man and a woman toggled together to fulfill a requirement of the missionary agency who sent them west--missionaries, after all, had to be married. Both of them wanted to be missionaries, both of them were on their way to a single life, both needed a spouse to answer what they considered to be God's call. So they got married. And, wonders upon wonders, it worked, ah, passionately. There were sparks. There was fire. Yup.
I have such a good place to shelter - under my husband's wings. He is so excellent. I love to confide in his judgment, and act under him, for it gives me a chance to improve. Jane, if you want to be happy get as good a husband as I have got, and be a missionary. Mary, I wish you were with us. You would be happy, as I am. The way looks pleasant, notwithstanding we are so near encountering the difficulties of an unheard-of journey for females.
Not only did she make it to Oregon aboard the wagon, she insisted--can you imagine such a thing?--she insisted on riding horseback whenever she could, and loved it. Side-saddled, of course. After all, no lady would ride astride (it's a sin even to think of such a thing). She even wandered away from the wagon train now and then, because what she was seeing, she seemed to understand, was magnificence no white woman had ever seen before.
Not only that, but Narcissa Whitman, a newlywed in what one might well call an arranged marriage--I hardly dare to say it--got pregnant on the trip. That's right, got herself "in the family way," which means, well, I don't have to spell it out, but I will anyway: it means she and her husband were sporting out there in the all that wild country. Can you believe it?
I first met Narcissa Whitman's story out near Ash Hollow, Nebraska, on the way up to Chimney Rock and all those welcoming monuments, where a highway sign tells her story--well some of it.
But this morning I don't want to go to the sad-and-sorry, heartbreaking stuff. I want to stay here at a place where Narcissa and Marcus and their traveling companions all saw the sights for the very first time, where they pulled their wagon along a trail she told her readers was just as comfortable as any road back east.
I like to imagine of her, sidesaddle, on one of the horses she rode to do her own precious brand of touring, out here, riding right up to Chimney Rock herself, just to see it up-close and personal. I like to think of her romping around this country, but girding her loins right then for what she had to know was coming now--the virtually impassable Rockies.
She made it. They all did. As did the wagon. They did something no one had ever accomplished before, right here on a path you can still follow without any more crowds than they ever saw. Amazing. Imagine her here, wearing the boots she bought before she left, men's boots. Imagine her here, in love, her own imagination firing with the wonders of what she knew in her soul was God's own creation. Just imagine.
Yes, there is more to the story, epic failure and sadness; but I found her here along the way in Nebraska, along the Oregon Trail, riding through the prairie grass, and for now, at least, that's where I want her to keep her.
No comments:
Post a Comment