Seven Trails: To Build a Crossroads in the West

E. Leon Chidester

I.

Jedediah S. Smith: Preeminent trail blazer of the Intermountain West, 1822-1831

Jedediah, his mother had called him (Because of the Lord),
but that’s not what his men called out that morning
on Wyoming’s high plains, brush-filled creek bottom, when
they chanced on the grizzly.

He lured the brute from the pack train, up onto open ground,
where it charged. Grabbed by the head, shaken, flung sprawling
over raw earth, ribs broken, skull laid bare, had he heard his name
through the bleeding orifice, his ear ripped off?

Did he hear that same name later, among death-throes
of his men as they fell massacred before the Mojave
and again with waiting Umpqua knives?

Down Eastern slopes of the Sierra, out onto the arid Basin,
dead fringes of salt deserts, what did his wasted companions
call him?  What, high noon, when the last spent one lay
down in hot shade of a cedar to die of thirst, or his response
when his struggling guide returned with drink?

Which name that afternoon along the drought-sucked Cimarron,
that feral stretch down to Santa Fé, again in search of liquid life
for his thirsting men?  Which name did he hear; which did he call
out when Comanches caught him along the lonely river bed
and filled his long-scarred youth with a grace of spears?

II

Old Spanish Trail: Santa Fé-Central Utah Corridor-Los Angeles, 1821-1852

Local chauvinists bolster civic pride
marking still extant segments
of the route through backyard fields
just out of town.  “Way of heroes,”

“Toughest pack trail in North America!”

But for others, it is gone, like a quiet street
once modest through a neighborhood,
turned thoroughfare to drain a now
seedy edge of town; a Grande Dame
with too much history.

The great arch that swept north
as far as Our Lady of Mercy of the
Timpanogos was indeed a Spanish trail,
failed in its efforts to supply
God’s missions on the distant coast.
But when links were finally forged, Spain
with its dreams was gone, and it was simple trade
that greased the wheels that covered twelve
hundred brutal miles; wool from Santa Fé

for horses from California’s teeming herds.

Or yet, more common, marauders that killed
and took; that drove whole herds back
up this trail, water hole to water hole,
trading horse flesh among the tribes,
and back to Santa Fé.  Or worse still,
a sordid merchandise in human flesh
both ways: children of the decimated tribes
that preyed on one another and sold
their sons and daughters into hell.  Record
has it that the chief, his offer countered,
took the child, splashed his brains across
sun-baked soil, threw the body before
contracting parties as evidence of their cruelty
in not paying what he asked.

Mormons followed these tracks in their southwest
push to stretch their Deseret to shores
of the Pacific; 49’ers used it in their lust for gold.
Dust Bowl Okies followed in their dreams
of Paradise, as do naive tourists in their rush.
A pause of reverence at casino tables on the Strip,
and stripped, they push on bravely
to the waiting glamor of L.A.

III

Hastings Cutoff/Donner-Reed Trail: Salt Flats, Great Salt Lake-Eastern Sierra Nevada, 1846

A route, by definition, presupposes both beginning
and a formal end; a goal; spells out a destination,
produces its own reward.  This one doesn’t;
peters out in cold remorse below a pass through
another mountain range.

Call it an unsutured cut; call it a cut-through, a cut-off.
Down from Fort Bridger, enmeshed among tangled oak
and willow thickets choking passage along narrow creeks,
impossible grades, one summit beyond another
summit, fighting time through the high Wasatch.

Out, then, onto white: a brittle saline crust too delicate
to hold wagons with their teams.  Naive haste at first
kicked up bitter dust that filled lungs, then broke through,
sank in primordial muck that clung in clots to hooves
and foundering wheels.

Desperation’s push for water, still eighty miles across
the salt, emptied loads not only of simple treasures
hoarded from the east, but clothes and food
they would remember on the Humboldt when Digger braves
drove exhausted teams into night.

And again on high slopes of the frozen Sierra, now entrapped
in snow where stalled life wasted thin as memory.
They who survived on starved strength of those
who didn’t would follow a trail of sordid guilt
that had no end, not even in the cess of California’s
accepting crowds.

IV

Mormon Trail: Council Bluffs–Great Salt Lake City, 1847-1869

Do not expect more of this peculiar folk,
pilgrims, strangers, here only on whim
of desperation’s needs.
These are not the path markers
nor trail makers of lonely lands;
not they to stand among sagebrush
on some wind-stripped ridge
and look in wild thirst across another
mirage-laced valley they must cross
only to prove a crossing; not they
with some mad drive first to trace
the course of myth’s deep rivers
that drain the salty depths
of this inland sea.  They are less,
or more; perhaps just different.
They know where they are going,
and move with discipline and motive
in regimented droves, a thousand miles
up tributaries of the Mississippi,
along shared routes and rivers.
Path-followers, they quietly plant
their dead along the way.

It is down fromFort Bridger
that this retinue becomes vanguard,
hard through the daunting Wasatch
to whatever waits them beyond.
But they cannot merely pass,
observe, take note, move on,
however short the time and
difficult the land.  They must
make new choices, or lay smooth
old, half-blazed paths; hack
and clear and build for those behind
and yet behind.

Through canyon bottoms, wild oak thickets,
repeatedly across bouldered creekbeds,
up impossible slopes, dangerous inclines,
and down, as ordered hosts, to dam streams
and turn fields and gardens of vision’s
uncertain future in this place.

V

Trail Notes for Goldseekers: Great Salt Lake City-San Bernardino, 1849-1860

Their roads are clear, and you’ve got little worry from Fort Bridger down
into Mormon country, but don’t plan to winter there.  They’re a clannish
lot, though I won’t say over bent on violence as some assert.
You won’t find work, and they’ll complain of your livestock feeding
on meadows they now claim.  They’d rather take, at their price,
what you think you can’t carry any more, and have you on your way.

But don’t be cowed either.  West onto that salt desert is dancing
with death, no matter what the tune or the time of year, or newer trace.
Try it at your risk.  There are those whose rush is blind enough
to push them out across that trail. And even though the season’s new
and days abundant, you’ll still have to consider those quick graves
at the foot of Donner’s Pass.

I recommend the southern route, but even that is hell and some won’t
last.  You’ll make good time for the first two weeks: Salt Springs,
Chalk Creek, Beaver Wash . . . a hundred-fifty miles of dust and brackish
water.  You can do that.  But it’s about here someone
will start to whisper of a new-found map, or of a mountain man
their good friend knows who’s just back from a real short cut, straight
west from here, over the Sierras by a secret pass.  Drop five hundred miles
from your trip; have you in gold fields in three weeks flat.  Modest fee.

Don’t get drawn in!  Don’t listen to those nuggets rattle until it’s your pan
you hold!  Those wild hare tales have all been tried, and dupes come back,
if they come at all, crazed for water, lips cracked and bleeding over
bulging tongues, eyes sunk into skulls already marked for graves.
Remember, someplace out there there’s a spot they call Death Valley.
My best advice to you at this stage of your trip, is to walk more
than you think, and to keep sucking that chip of smooth rock to cheat
your thirst.

After you drop over rim of the Basin, the country will get drier
with each mile.  If your team gives out and you resort to saddle
or foot, burn your wagon to keep it out of Mormon hands.  They’re
up and down this trail, and hell knows how they survive.  Yes,
there are springs beneath some side peaks, water hidden up box canyons;
the tribes that drive stolen horses up this route know them well.
But you don’t!  Don’t leave the wagon ruts.  There are still a spring
or two hard by this final stretch; a bit of green at the vegas, sometimes
on the Panamint, at headwaters of the Mojave.  Hold firm!  This will be’

the last cruel push, the one that keeps from lesser folk the recompense
belonging only to the bold.  Take courage.  When at last you pass
over the Cajón and head down into San Bernardino, those cool creeks
and clear water will taste of gold itself!

VI

Russell, Majors, and Waddell’s Pony Express Route: Missouri to California, 1860-1861

My dearest husband, It is with sorrow’s weight I write you,
entrusting thoughts to wiles of a savage wilderness.

Out from Missouri, and from Great Salt Lake City down
in ten-mile stops: Rockwell Station, Carson’s Inn . . .

Your sainted mother left her vale of tears this Tuesday past,
felled by apoplexy’s brutal blows.

Way stations kept by lonely men, in the middle of empty
desert, target of vengeance for the wounded tribes.

With the last attack, she never rose again, languished like
an angel lost, a child crying against the dark.

Sometimes a mere dugout hole roofed over with split cedar, brush
and mud; adobe chimney, corrals and graves out back.

Old Doctor Parker told us, in confidence, he had used up
all his skills, that we should turn to God and seek his balm.

East Rush Valley, Faust Station,Simpson Springs where they brought
Nick Wilson to dig out the arrowhead embedded in his skull.

Pastor Olsen was there when she passed, closed her gentle eyes
and prayed.  In those last moments it was you she asked to come.

Every ten miles, a fresh horse waiting, young men numb to danger.
2000 miles in a long week’s ride, St. Joseph to Sacramento.

We have lain her on the slope, under the lilac next to your father.
Fall’s birds are there in flocks, where, I’m sure, your thoughts rest too.

FishSprings, Boyd’s Station, Willow Creek and Ibapah on Nevada’s
long line, waiting urgent in time and space.

Oh, dear one, try to feel my pain; for even with swift ponies
and valiant lads, sweet love, my words will move too slow!
VII

Lake Powell, Padre Bay: The inundated site of the Crossing of the Fathers,
where on November 7, 1776, the Dominguez/Escalante expedition
finally found its way down to and across the Colorado.

It’s not as if their feat were insignificant.
Lost in alien lands, abandoned among walled
canyons, they wandered in search of a ford
across this treacherous river.  November’s freezing
rain, then snow over the mesas; they lived
on prickly pear and slaughtered horse, imploring
intercession of the Holy Mother for her sons.

Granted or found, significant word came
that from the rim, a thousand feet and more
above the stream, they had seen a way–

a side canyon’s deadly risk, final descent
down sheer cliff rock, where they would cut
steps with axes, footing for the frightened mares,
down to the shore.  Down to late fall’s slowing
current, the widest part where the ford appeared
to be; to wait in peril for the first who passed
on foot and back to lead them through.
They crossed over to the homeward side.

What is significant is that these were the fathers,
the forebears, patres familias.  Our sires beyond
all consideration of time or creed or celibate intent,
they who found a way where there was no way,
and guided us across.
And still across archetypal urban canyons, rampant
ledges of corporate greed, dumb terror of unknown drops,
the gnawing dread of what is always near, darkly embedded,
unwashed by storms of any season, or currents
at the cruelest ford.  They found a way.

What is significant is we’ve lost the way, that crossing
now oblivious beneath the tourist lake, where, hemmed in
by tainted shores, expensive, delicate craft, skim surfaces
with desperation’s speed, they too in flight before
an existential emptiness; a thousand liquid feet and more
for faux fountains, falls and pools in Vegas’ desert,
electricity to power the air-conditioned cool for urgent crowds
that cross from game to game.