Go West, Young Man!

I traveled to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, a couple weekends ago to do research for a short story I am writing about the Oregon Trail. As my husband and I were driving toward I-25 afterward, we saw the outline of Laramie Peak in the distance, obscured by wildfire smoke.

For pioneers traveling west on the Oregon Trail in the 1840s, this would be the first time any of them saw the Rocky Mountains and realized that harder roads lay ahead of them.

Over 500 miles lie between Fort Laramie and the next big stop on the trail, Fort Hall, in southeast Idaho, with not much civilization in between. It was all wilderness. As I looked toward Laramie Peak, I thought about the challenges that lay before the pioneers. If they ran out of food, they couldn’t make a quick grocery run to King Soopers. If a wheel fell of their wagon or they got stuck in the mud, they couldn’t call AAA or the highway patrol for help. There were no hospitals or an urgent care facilities. They didn’t have cell phones; they didn’t have Internet; they couldn’t call 911. The only thing they had to rely on was themselves and their own grit and courage.

As I stood on that high hillside and looked toward Laramie Peak, I wondered if I would have had the courage to keep going or if I, like some pioneers, would decide that I had “seen the elephant” and could go no further.

I’d like to think I would have been the kind of person who said, “All right, let’s go.”