Days 51-53 – 8/21-8/23 – Spring Creek Campground to Bridgeport, NE – 77 miles

Multiple days have passed since a momentous development in this walk, and yet I’ve paid no reference to it in this written account. I have left the American Discovery Trail, after nearly 4000 miles of walking spread across five years. Will I ever return to it? It’s difficult to say. On one hand, while walking across the USA is something I had to do, something I even more urgently need to complete now than when the walk resumed in June, there’s more enjoyable and scenic walking to be done elsewhere, with a much higher ratio of gratification to labor. On the other, I’m a damned completionist, so could I be pulled back to complete the short leg from Paxton to Denver? Could I be tempted into walking from the Pacific to Lake Tahoe? Yeah, that’s pretty tempting.

In the meantime, though, I’m now officially on the Oregon Trail, or at least my best approximation of it. It certainly won’t be perfectly loyal. In part, that’s because there is no singular Oregon Trail; even following the Platte through Nebraska, pioneers split between north and south. It’s also a function of something similar to what has complicated the recovery of the Camino and other pilgrimage routes–yesterday’s trails are often today’s highways. At times, there will be no other option; I’ll even follow Interstate 84 for a stage in Oregon. (Fun fact: It’s legal to walk on I-84 throughout most of Oregon.) At others, though, a more scenic or less paved option will coax me away. Third, it’s sometimes difficult to reconstruct exactly what the pioneers did. The sources aren’t perfect. I made use of historical texts on the route, Rinker Buck’s exceptionally useful account of his journey, and Google Maps–looking for roads still labeled as Oregon Trail. And finally, as on the ADT, sometimes choices are made purely for the sake of efficiency or access to a cold drink or a soft bed.

My walk from Paxton to McConaughy Lake favored scenery over authenticity, but by the time dawn cast its rosy fingers over the horizon, I was back on solid ground, looping past Ash Hollow. Once the site of a pivotal battle between the Lakota Sioux and Pawnee, in time this became a crucial stop for emigrants, offering freshwater springs and shelter. This is one of many places where wagon ruts remain preserved.

Soon after, to reinforce the transition, I arrived at the Oregon Trail Café, the first of many I’ll encounter bearing that moniker. Inside, while inhaling an omelet, I chatted with a truck driver about how odd I found the area–simultaneously the most scenic region I’ve passed through and also the most barren in terms of services. “I can think of at least six diners just like this one, between here and Douglas [Wyoming], that have closed down in the last few years,” he said. “Business isn’t great, but they also can’t find people to work.” Perhaps, I thought, the loss of some creature comforts will help to underscore that authentic feeling of ruggedness as I continue westward.

From Lewellen to Oshkosh, I marched in a straight line, eager to reach my hotel before the full heat of the day peaked. As corn has declined, along with my proximity to it, so too has the humidity. For that reason, the heat doesn’t swing a hammer quite like it did in Illinois and Iowa, but it’s still routinely topping off in the low 90s. And with a lot of camping in this stretch, every minute of additional air conditioning is worth the push.

Still, I paused to take note of a historical placard, detailing the Battle of Blue Water, which took place here on September 3, 1855. The event was a response to a previous battle, when Lt. Grattan’s command at Fort Laramie–where I’ll be in a few days–was “annihilated” by an Indian force. The US army’s Sioux Expedition, led by Col. William S. Harney, determined that the group responsible for the defeat–some 250 Brules and Oglalas–was residing at a Lakota village on Blue Creek. Col. Harney initiated a conversation with their leaders, but that was really just a ruse, allowing a large portion of his cohort to circle around behind the village. On command, those men cut loose, employing new, long-range rifles to full effect, driving the indigenous villagers directly into the maw of Harney’s mounted soldiers. Also known as Harney’s Massacre, this resulted in 86 dead, along with 70 women and children taken prisoner. While a full-fledged war would eventually come in 1863, this battle “kept the Overland Trail open” for a while yet.

Oshkosh, the goose-hunting capital of Nebraska, was a comfortable place to spend the night, but it also reinforced for me that I needed to update something I recently wrote. While it was certainly true at the time that the Trump-related promotional materials had been subdued and reduced, those have all returned at full blast. Signs were suddenly commonplace among the houses overlooking McConaughy Lake. Even more dramatic, though, was the display put on at Oshkosh’s drug store. Every window was covered with a Trump flag, safe for one, resulting in the endearing juxtaposition of a flag featuring Trump’s raised fist following the assassination attempt across from a “You are my sunshine” banner. A day later, a small convenience store had almost as much Trump apparel as it did food, including an impressive range of felony-related material and an “I will not comply” hat complete with a semi-automatic rifle.

While the terrain flattened out a bit from Lewellen onward to Broadwater, limestone ridges have begun emerging to the north from the sand hills, and these formations were familiar to the pioneers. While the Mormon pilgrims, in particular, were apt to bequeath names on distinct formations, most of those have been replaced over the years. One that persists is the Ancient Bluff Ruins, where Brigham Young and the team seem to have spent a memorable and jovial night, including a mock trial of one of their members. They were preceded to that spot more than a decade earlier by Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding, members of the Protestant “Oregon Mission,” who became the first white women to cross the American continent in 1836. Around the time the Mormons caught up with her in 1847, she was already reaching her end, as Narcissa, her husband, and 11 others were massacred by Cayuse Indians at the Walla Walla Mission

I’ve been listening to Kurt Anderson’s Fantasyland over the last couple days. It’s one of my favorite works of American history. As a teacher, I always wanted to use history tactically, to help students make sense of the present, and there aren’t many books that I find as effective at contextualizing this particular era in the United States. His focus is on the distinctly American affinity for fantasies, from our founding to the present, and the ways that this has become increasingly alarming and damaging over recent decades. He ties his discussion of American gun mania–not the desire to have a rifle and go deer-hunting, but rather to possess a private arsenal–into some of the historical narratives we maintain about the Wild West, rugged individualism, and the process of “taming” the land. There’s a heaping helping of performative toughness bound up in this, as (overwhelmingly) men strive to assert their strength, dominance, and control through heavy artillery. And obviously, Trump’s performative toughness is part of his appeal with that group, pushing back against their view of the left’s “effete” masculinity and the “woke mind virus.” Maybe too, though, it resonates in part because life here feels all the more tenuous. “For sale” signs are everywhere, along with those businesses that have already gone belly-up.

For all of that, though, this part of Nebraska has gifted me with some of the most heartening moments of hospitality that I’ve encountered on the walk. Nowhere else have I received so many offers of rides, nor had so many of those initial offers morph into conversations that ultimately block traffic. (This included what was probably the funniest moment in the trip: A young man in an old, green Honda Accord pulled over to offer me a ride. I thanked him, turned him down, and explained why. I noticed his arm and face were covered in tattoos. He seemed very friendly. Before he left, he said, “I’ve always wanted someone to ask me, ‘aren’t you worried you’ll pick up a serial killer?’, so that I could say, ‘but what are the odds of there being two in one car?'”) Similarly, I had more horns honked encouragingly over the last two days than I probably had in the rest of the trip all together.

And all of that has been topped by Broadwater, Nebraska. I reached out to a Broadwater-focused Facebook group the night before, just to see if they had any intel about whether or not it would be acceptable to camp in the city park. Before the night was done, I not only received confirmation that camping would be fine, but I was also informed that my contact had arranged for the bathroom to be left unlocked overnight. Even better, they were going to bring me something to eat, since the diner was closed! I had a vision of a sack lunch, with maybe a sandwich and some chips. Instead, I was welcomed by Rachelle and Maryanne, who brought an incredible gnocchi-veggie bake, along with pickled beets and cucumber. They also supplied breakfast, including an amazing wedge of zucchini bread. There was a full container of iced tea, bottles of water and lemonade, a bag of mint candies, and even some extra fruit. It was almost overwhelming, to have an anonymous Facebook query morph into a hot dinner and conversation, along with plenty of supplies to get me onto the next town.

It’s a funny thing–the rugged individualism somehow came to dominate the story of the march westward, but of course it was entirely dependent upon community coming together and supporting one another. Including, it’s important to note, offering hospitality to wayward travelers in need. I was left reminded once again that, in my constant pursuit of self-sufficiency and minimizing my impact on others–on being a bastion of rugged individuality–I am, in a way, cutting myself off from others, and the opportunity to be connected in shared humanity, as I was in Broadwater.

A blustery storm whipped through Broadwater in the middle of the night. Even situated as I was, beneath the park’s ample shelter, I still felt the spray of raindrops pelting my bivy. I never quite settled back into slumber afterward, so I rose at 4am and hit the road. There’s nothing like the adrenaline that surges through at the onset of a short day. It’s almost dangerous–19 miles is hardly an inconsequential distance, and it’s possible to psych yourself out mentally. No such threat today, though. I flew forward, reenergized by last night’s dinner.

Shortly before Bridgeport, another roadside historical marker spoke to the Oregon Trail’s greatest cliché, at least for my generation. “On June 23, 1850,” it noted, “twenty-eight-year-old Amanda Lamme, a California-bound emigrant, died of cholera and was buried near here.” It was a bad year for cholera on the trail, as were 1849 and 1852. As the sign makes clear, though, there were plenty of other hazards. Malaria, smallpox, and measles all reared their ugly heads. And the game was certainly right about the prevalence of dysentery as well.

But that’s not all. People occasionally died by getting crushed beneath wagon wheels. Others drowned at one of the many river crossings. Experience with firearms was so limited that accidental shootings happened at an alarming rate.

What astonished me, though, was how low the rate of death actually was for pioneers–just five percent of all who embarked upon this challenging journey. For all the stories about Indian-related violence, only 360 emigrants were killed by Indians on the Oregon Trail between 1840 and 1860. (It should be noted that more Indians were killed by emigrants over the same time period.) And here’s the kicker, courtesy again of the roadside sign: “The risk of death was probably about the same for the emigrants as for the people who stayed at home.” As counter-intuitive as it seems, the high-risk nature of the pioneer journey, it turns out, is a fantasy as well.