clear our path of snakes, but we had another reason to feel safer with stout sticks now. Between looking up at every ledge and overhanging tree limb for cougars and down around every rock for rattlers, it was a wonder I ever kept track of my feet.
We didn't pass any homesteads this whole day, so we had to sleep outside. A spindly tree didn't offer real protection against cougars, snakes, or rain, but I still preferred to sleep cozied under a pine rather than in the open scrub. We spread our ponchos over mounded brush and stretched out, alert to the sounds of the night. Every mouse scurry became a rattlesnake; every lonesome coyote howl became the vanguard of a hungry wolf pack. I finally sleptâbackside up, to protect my innards.
July 27, 1896 â Day 83 Between nowhere and more nowhere, Wyoming
Nothing to report this week except that, in spite of having to stop for Ma to rest more often, we kept to our goal of twenty-five miles a day. I entertained myself by watching dust devils and the shifting shadows on the ground cast from clouds above, and by convincing myself that over the next rise I would discover something wondrous. It was always more miles of scrub.
Other than the occasional passing train, it was like Ma and I were the last people left on the planet.
July 30, 1896 â Day 86 Approaching civilization in Rawlins, Wyoming
Ma was even quieter today, smaller and wilted. I tried to perk her up with some "do you remembers," but she said she was too thirsty to talk. I couldn't let her slip into a down spell so far from home. Would new people to talk to put her starch back? I was as ruthless as Simon Legree in
Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Pushing her to walk an extra fifteen miles todayâforty totalâwe reached Rawlins, the first place bigger than a whistle stop in one hundred and twenty miles. We checked in at the
Carbon County Journal
office and gave our story. The publisher, Mr. Friend, said he knew someone who would likely take us in tonight.
We walked out West Cedar Street to a boxy two-story house with flowered curtains in the window and knocked. The woman who opened the door was not much taller than my sister Ida, and dressed as elegantly as Ida did in her dreams. "I'm Dr. Holmes," she said with a smile, and invited us in.
I was relieved to see Ma brighten at a new face. She started talking almost faster than a body's ears could listen. Mercifully, I did not have to listen to her "why women should have the right to vote" talk again, since women had voted in Wyoming since just after the Civil War. Dr. Holmes was a champion listener.
By ten o'clock I was yawning, but Ma was still wearing a path in the rug describingâwith exuberant hand gestures as well as wordsâHenry's death, her bout with consumption, her previous plans to save the farm, and how she was sure this walk across the country was the best idea she'd ever had. "I had to do something. I couldn't stay put and let the farm go to the sheriff's sale." Ma looked at me.
"You're right, Ma," I said. "We had to do something." At the thought of another four months to go, however, I wondered if this walk had been the right something.
Without saying another word, Ma got out her journal and began to write, as if she were alone in the room.
Dr. Holmes smiled toward me. "Want to find a breeze on the porch?"
I followed her outside and sat on the edge of the porch, leaning against one of the pillars. Dr. Holmes and I looked at the stars in friendly silence for several minutes. Then she spoke. "Your mother must have an iron constitution if she can have consumption one month and start to walk across the country the next. I never had a patient who could do that."
"You never know about Ma," I said. "For months she'll hardly sleep and wear everyone out with her projects and then she'll need to sleep a lot. After Henry died, she did have a cough, and although she said it was consumption, I thought she was just being melodramatic, or using consumption as
We didn't pass any homesteads this whole day, so we had to sleep outside. A spindly tree didn't offer real protection against cougars, snakes, or rain, but I still preferred to sleep cozied under a pine rather than in the open scrub. We spread our ponchos over mounded brush and stretched out, alert to the sounds of the night. Every mouse scurry became a rattlesnake; every lonesome coyote howl became the vanguard of a hungry wolf pack. I finally sleptâbackside up, to protect my innards.
July 27, 1896 â Day 83 Between nowhere and more nowhere, Wyoming
Nothing to report this week except that, in spite of having to stop for Ma to rest more often, we kept to our goal of twenty-five miles a day. I entertained myself by watching dust devils and the shifting shadows on the ground cast from clouds above, and by convincing myself that over the next rise I would discover something wondrous. It was always more miles of scrub.
Other than the occasional passing train, it was like Ma and I were the last people left on the planet.
July 30, 1896 â Day 86 Approaching civilization in Rawlins, Wyoming
Ma was even quieter today, smaller and wilted. I tried to perk her up with some "do you remembers," but she said she was too thirsty to talk. I couldn't let her slip into a down spell so far from home. Would new people to talk to put her starch back? I was as ruthless as Simon Legree in
Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Pushing her to walk an extra fifteen miles todayâforty totalâwe reached Rawlins, the first place bigger than a whistle stop in one hundred and twenty miles. We checked in at the
Carbon County Journal
office and gave our story. The publisher, Mr. Friend, said he knew someone who would likely take us in tonight.
We walked out West Cedar Street to a boxy two-story house with flowered curtains in the window and knocked. The woman who opened the door was not much taller than my sister Ida, and dressed as elegantly as Ida did in her dreams. "I'm Dr. Holmes," she said with a smile, and invited us in.
I was relieved to see Ma brighten at a new face. She started talking almost faster than a body's ears could listen. Mercifully, I did not have to listen to her "why women should have the right to vote" talk again, since women had voted in Wyoming since just after the Civil War. Dr. Holmes was a champion listener.
By ten o'clock I was yawning, but Ma was still wearing a path in the rug describingâwith exuberant hand gestures as well as wordsâHenry's death, her bout with consumption, her previous plans to save the farm, and how she was sure this walk across the country was the best idea she'd ever had. "I had to do something. I couldn't stay put and let the farm go to the sheriff's sale." Ma looked at me.
"You're right, Ma," I said. "We had to do something." At the thought of another four months to go, however, I wondered if this walk had been the right something.
Without saying another word, Ma got out her journal and began to write, as if she were alone in the room.
Dr. Holmes smiled toward me. "Want to find a breeze on the porch?"
I followed her outside and sat on the edge of the porch, leaning against one of the pillars. Dr. Holmes and I looked at the stars in friendly silence for several minutes. Then she spoke. "Your mother must have an iron constitution if she can have consumption one month and start to walk across the country the next. I never had a patient who could do that."
"You never know about Ma," I said. "For months she'll hardly sleep and wear everyone out with her projects and then she'll need to sleep a lot. After Henry died, she did have a cough, and although she said it was consumption, I thought she was just being melodramatic, or using consumption as
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