Photo Essay: The Nebraska Trail
Driving the Oregon Trail in reverse and taking a whiff of the past.
For generations, covered wagons from Conestoga to Subaru have crossed through Mitchell Pass at Scotts Bluff, Nebraska as I recently did. Driving in reverse on the Oregon Trail, west to east, I traveled back in time from Portland to the Nebraska panhandle, land of my forebears and earliest memories.
Seeing the homes where your grandparents raised your parents, you get a sense for how those who formed you grew up, where they spent every single day, the doors they walked in and walked out, the windows they wondered through, the lawn they mowed and sold corn cobs and cherries on, and you get an idea of how they came together and eventually created the human known as you. Seeing their houses located three blocks apart I wonder if my adventurous dad (from the other side of the tracks) ever snuck out to meet my tempestuous mom at the park or fairgrounds, and I do hope he did without getting caught like I did, by mom twenty-some years later, spotting me through the window as I was pushing the Olds out the driveway to go see a girl who was not destined for me, apparently.
In Deadwood, I watched Monday Night Football with a mostly Seahawk crowd at Saloon #10, a bar with one TV, and I saw a gent on a horse order an Irish Mule and when the bartender asked if his horse wanted anything, the horse neighed, I kid you not. Jack McCall and Wild Bill Hickok hung out in the back until Jack had his fill of too much swill and shot Bill in the back of the head at a poker table, sparking the legend of the Deadman’s Hand, aces and eights. I folded and moved on.
The next day I spotted Crazy Horse on a mountain top and asked the way to the valley of the Little Big Horn and he pointed northwest to Montana. So through the Northern Cheyenne reservation I trekked, my Subaru covered wagon tucked in among Mad Max trucks on cracked pavement splattered by rain drops and came to the Little Big Horn battle site, the greasy grass where ghosts still lie on the hill, taking cover behind dead horses, dark blood flowing slowly into the blissful earth, now soft and dewy in the mist.
I found the dirt path that Chet and I took at the 125th Anniversary Battle Reenactment in a brazen attempt to get a better view and avoid the grandstand lines, which put us dead center in the battle zone forcing me to wheel my mother’s Ford Taurus around and retreat stat, much like Custer and his ill-fated crew did June 25,1876. Only they got caught. Chet and I escaped in the Taurus.
Cutting north on a two-lane, I made it to the town of, yes, Custer (still alive), where a good friend is coach of the high school football team. I’d hoped to catch a practice but the team was absent, off playing Absarokee, so I dropped into the Junction City Saloon and fell into discussion with locals on a very important topic - how to pronounce the name of a particular road in Ballantine, a talk that stretched past twenty minutes, as talks do in small towns, and on the wall I noticed a large framed photo of the 2003 Custer football team that played in the Montana State 6-Man Football Championship which Custer lost to Geraldine 80-78 in OT. I was witness, having driven over that morning from Missoula, in the year of our Great Family Migration east, from Oregon back to Montana, resulting in a family vote (April Fools Day, 2004) to return to Oregon, which we did retracing the ruts we’d carved a year earlier in our Isuzu Rodeo.
Motoring on to Billings for the High Plains Book Awards, I walked with friends through shedding cottonwoods along the Yellowstone and my allergies went haywire and loud sneezes reverberated through the trees, causing a mother striding by to cover her child’s mouth and ears. Later, nose blown, I read a smattering of poems at a panel discussion and sniffed after every line, trying to keep my nose from dripping onto the pages, which made it seem like I was gently crying, a poet so emotional his own words broke him up, which may have helped improve the poems though I did not win.
Back on the trail west, crossing the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass on the border of Montana and Idaho, I came to the headwaters of the Missouri and Jefferson rivers, where it became obvious to Lewis & Clark that the fabled water passage they sought across the Rockies to the Pacific did not exist. Standing where they did, straddling the past of Crazy Horse and Wild Bill and Custer and Geraldine and Lewis and Clark and my parents and grandparents and wife and daughter, I took a whiff of history and sneezed, again. I may be allergic to the past, who knows. It seems to me that where you come from matters, so be careful where you go and carry a handkerchief.
Love the story and the summary in the last line... where you come from matters so be careful where you go... You're getting downright wise in your old age.
Enjoy all of these Tom. Keep em coming