Personalities on the Trail

Have you ever taken a long airplane flight, say for six to eight hours? It is hard being cooped up with a bunch of strangers, all headed to the same place you are but handling that time together so very differently than you. After COVID, traveling seems even more tedious and behaviors even more extreme. 

Now imagine traveling with folks that you know. That makes it better, right? Maybe you have had many meals together and your children are around the same age, so you know these folks pretty well. You’re maybe even related, in-laws of some variety. The trip will be easier because you are familiar with temperaments, senses of humor, and foibles of all kinds. You know that Uncle Otis becomes difficult after his third whisky, so keep him at one.

Next imagine the trip being six to eight months. Everything you own is packed in a box on wheels that is four feet wide and ten to twelve feet long. Everything you need to travel twelve hundred miles is inside. This wagon is your family’s center, the livestock pulling it are your only means of forward movement. Oh, and if you must, you can haul the animals' feed as well.

Let’s say you are traveling with familiar folks, those who you grew up with, perhaps some in-laws, maybe some church members, too. You know some of their tendencies, good and bad, but at least you have your own space at night. Everyone has similar finances, and all have paid the same amount to join the company as well as having elected the company leader.

Taking off from your hometown in the spring is exciting, a new adventure awaits around every unfamiliar corner. The country is beautiful, and each traveling day represents between twelve and twenty miles closer to your goal of California. Everyone is buoyant with anticipation, so the communal evening meals are filled with happy laughter and full bellies.

After two months of traveling, those evening meals are more subdued, everyone having fallen into the wagon company’s routine of greasing axles, feeding livestock, cleaning up the meal and preparing bedrolls under the wagons. The small children start to whine a little, the barely showing pregnant newlywed is now uncomfortable sleeping on the ground. Someone has picked up a cough with all the trail’s dust and it is borderline hacking. And a well-liked church member has gone uncharacteristically quiet.

Things start happening to the livestock and wagons after the third month and repairs slow down the whole show. Livestock go lame and are butchered for the company’s benefit. The next fort is two weeks away. A child goes missing and everyone takes two days to look but never finds them. The mother is heartbroken, but the company must move on. It starts raining, which means the trail gets muddy and the wheels bog down. Instead of twelve to twenty miles a day, the company is happy for ten.

Out of nowhere, three young men show up and ask to join the company. They only have horses and bedrolls. They say they can drive and repair wagons in a pinch. The company leader allows them to join after making them pay for their meals.

By the fifth month, there is noticeable strife. The quiet church member has quit coming to the communal meal, now sleeps with a gun, and pulls it on anyone who comes to offer him food. The pregnant girl gives birth on the trail and offers a light moment to all but then loses her husband in a random accident. Or was it random? One of the new joiners picked a fight with the new father just a few days before and then this accident happened. Suspicion creeps in. A woman whose children are about the same age as yours starts wailing uncontrollably and no one can soothe her, not even her children. 

A train of covered wagons drawn by oxen and horses is cutting through the prairie, flanked on either side by men on horseback, 1850. Mountains are visible in the background. USC Libraries Special Collection/Calisphere.

The Sierra Mountains are getting closer every day, you can see them in the distance, but it looks like the last storm left a skiff of snow on their peaks, doesn’t it? The animals are so thirsty they bawl the entire day, but no one has any water to give them. The company member with the hacking cough quit and no one wants to look in their wagon to see why.

The company starts traveling at night because the day temperatures are so hot in the desert. The wind chaps everyone’s faces and lips so smiling is out of the question. While the company waits for the sun to go down, there’s a shot. The church member is found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The men break out the shovels and dig into the hard, granular ground taking out an inch at a time. Finally, the grave is three feet deep, it is time to move out, so they put the body in the hole, cover it and say a few words before loading up.

When the company reaches the foothills of the Sierras, everyone looks up at the “trail” before them. It is rock and shale. Days are passed unloading one wagon at a time, the men straining to haul the wagon up the trail and the woman hauling the wagon’s goods behind. Not that there are that many goods left after being forced to lighten the load along the trail. 

But finally, the company reaches the summit and stares out at the other side. The trees are greener, the grass is taller, and the water is flowing abundantly. The company, or what’s left of it, have made it to California. Not everyone is in their right mind. No one is sure what awaits them. Is there still gold laying around to be picked up? Some of the children are so thin, their mothers worry they will never plump up again.

But deep down, there is hope. They made it the whole way, through all the trials and tribulation. There is opportunity here, once they get their bearings, and good things will come to them now.

Isn’t that how you feel after that long, eight hour flight?