Days 66-68 – 9/7-9/9 – Atlantic City to Kemmerer, WY – 117 miles

If you want to hear the best argument in favor of Manifest Destiny, look not to the heavens. Look to the rocks. As Will Bagley explains in South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, between the full height of what would become the United States, from Marias Pass near the Canadian border and Guadalupe Pass closer to the Mexican side, there existed only one, singular route that wheeled vehicles could follow over the Rockies “without great physical or engineering challenges.” Combine that with the convenient conduit offered by the Platte River Valley, and it’s easy to understand why early Americans would see the continent as divinely designed for their westward expansion.

Of course, you’d have to look very closely to appreciate South Pass today. Not because the landscape is unimpressive. Over the course of this three days of walking, the walk from Atlantic City to South Pass, via South Pass City, stands out–without any sort of viable competition, truth be told–as the most appealing, varied, and evocative stretches. South Pass City, in particular, is an interesting contrast to Atlantic City. Whereas the latter, even today, preserves a hardscrabble, rough-and-tumble kind of feel–a place that is lived in and very much not putting on airs, South Pass City is packaged much more deliberately as a tourist site. The historic core is cordoned off from the residential block, with carefully staged artifacts on display, and the old Carissa Mine looms above it all, reminding everyone of what made this all possible.

No, you’d have to look closely because the pass itself is subtle, hard to notice, and difficult to define with precision. Bagley again: “As renowned geographer John Logan Allen observed, the topography of the pass is still so confusing that the exact location of South Pass is hard to detect on the modern plain.” He proceeds to note that we even have a difficult time arriving at consensus about its elevation–figures range from 7550 to 7412 to 7440 feet. Ultimately, the most precise definition of South Pass is offered by three Wyoming historians, who assert that “South Pass is the entire saddle between the summit of Mount Nystrom in the Wind River Mountains and the massive Oregon Buttes which dominate the southern horizon. The linear distance between these features is about twenty-five miles, though the Continental Divide between the two peaks actually winds along ridgelines for some forty miles.”

Perhaps, then, I can be forgiven for some confusion, when the “Continental Divide” road sign came miles before the “South Pass” sign provided by the BLM. In the end, it’s all of a piece.

If it’s difficult to pin down where South Pass lies, the opposite is true with the Red Desert. Almost immediately after crossing the pass, I was immersed in it. There would be little relief over the next two-and-a-half days, and I suspect there is no stretch on my walk where my life will be so very much in line with what the emigrants experienced. Between Atlantic City and Kemmerer, my ultimate destination, the only towns I passed through were South Pass City (population “about 4 people”) and Farson (population 212), though I skirted the edge of bustling Fontenelle (population 37) in the darkness at 5am as well. Very few houses or physical structures existed outside of those spaces.

Shortly after South Pass, the next historical landmark is the “Parting of the Ways,” the site at which pioneers diverged from the Oregon-California-Mormon highway that brought them somewhat together to this point. Part of this was driven by their pursuit of more direct routes to their ultimate destination. An equally important factor, though, was the hope of reaching water with sufficient consistency to survive. Rinker Buck faced the same challenges on his modern crossing of the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon, as he described in The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey. Most emigrants swung further still to the southwest, converging upon Fort Bridger, another 40 miles south of Kemmerer. Others, though, opted for the Sublette Cutoff, which saved 46 miles, at the cost of a prolonged waterless march through the desert. One of the great human traditions, it has to be acknowledged, is the traveler in pursuit of a shortcut!

My route loosely followed the Sublette, and it kicked my butt. I had a rare moment of despair on the first day. Hours had passed since my crossing of South Pass, and I felt like I’d been making good, steady progress. And yet, a road sign informed me that I still had another 20 miles to go until Farson. The sun was beating down, my body was sore from the extra weight I was carrying–food and water to carry me through these long, barren stretches–and I still had nearly seven hours of walking remaining! Farson has three sources of food: a café, a mercantile with ice cream and pizza, and a gas station. I knew I would miss on the former; it closes at 2pm and would be closed the following day completely. I expected that the mercantile would also be out of reach, as it shuts down at 7pm. But now, even the gas station would be a close call if my pace slipped.

I like to think that I’ve learned patience from walking. Everyone has their own default speed. It’s basic math. Miles divided by pace equals the length of a journey. Nothing to be done; that’s just how it is. Over the years, though, I’ve been able to chip away at the precision of that equation, accelerating and being able to sustain that speedier pace for longer and longer. Minimizing breaks, if there’s a good reason to. Pushing on, farther and farther. Encumbered by so much extra weight, though, and worn down a bit more by the higher-level elevation variance, I couldn’t accelerate. The math took the upper hand. Ultimately, the disaster scenario didn’t manifest; I arrived in Farson with plenty of time to buy some snacks at the gas station to complement my own supplies, and I appreciated how quickly the woman at the counter sized me up and offered guidance on where to spend the night. The town has a grassy patch behind the mercantile with water faucets, so I inhaled some food and quickly settled in for the night. Even then, I wasn’t prepared for what followed, as the evening temperatures plummeted into the 40s, and my hands were numbed by the cold as I tried to pack my tent and sleeping pad early the following morning.

But fortunately, the gas station was there, so I proceeded to thaw out with coffee and donuts.

Farson sits on the Big Sandy River, one of the few landmarks in this stretch, and a crucial hydration spot for early pioneers. It also provides this small corner of the desert with enough irrigation capacity to support some agriculture, leading to the neighboring town’s claim to the name Eden. From here, the next break in the desert comes at the Green River. Based on my route, that would be nearly 40 miles–shorter than yesterday, but with nearly the same weight on my shoulders. I needed to carry enough water to get me there. (Fun fact: if you ever need to carry a gallon of water with you, don’t buy a gallon water jug. Those things are made out of the flimsiest plastic and they’ll start leaking after a day or two. Get an Arizona Iced Tea jug. Those are made for battle.)

I realize that ecologists would collectively roll their eyes at my lack of appreciation and discernment when I characterize this stretch as barren. I’m sure that with proper education and training, I could discover all manner of wonders here. On this occasion, though, I felt like I was overdosing on sagebrush and scrub grass and dust. Antelopes and cliff chipmunks caught my eye, the former roaming in packs at a distance, the latter skittering through the nearby bushes at warp speed. Hawks circled occasionally overhead, while I noticed a few magpies chomping away at roadkill. By mile 15 or 20, though, I was firmly entrenched on autopilot, just marching with equal measures determination and fatalism. Even the historical markers largely abandoned me in this stretch. While the Meeker Markers were quite prominent, confirming that this was authentic trail, the main other placard spotlighted Pilot Butte–a small physical landmark some 25 miles in the distance. The only thing I took from that geological speedbump was how few landmarks there are out here, if that qualified as noteworthy! When I finally staggered into Slate Creek Campground, on the banks of the Green River, I felt a measure of relief that I’ve only experienced a few times on this trip. This is a primitive campground, and while a couple of vehicles were using it as an entry/exit point for boating, I was otherwise alone. I changed into my flip-flops, took six liters of Green River water for myself, and then shoved as much food down my gullet as possible. One more day.

The coyotes were on the prowl when I woke at 4am, howling away from a mercifully comfortable distance. Stars lit my way forward, climbing back up over the ridge cut by the Green River, and then due west. An hour in, I saw something remarkable, something fantastic–a brightly-lit complex in the distance that had the look of a gas station. My planning had led me to believe there would be nothing until Kemmerer, but suddenly I was imagining all manner of exciting delicacies that could be discovered at a highway travel center. I never encountered this oasis; maybe it wasn’t even real. More likely, it was an oil processing complex, far larger in reality than my desert-addled brain could compute at that early hour. I walked on.

The route to Kemmerer was largely road-bound, pushing westward up and around Round Mountain, before cutting southward after Willow Springs, following alongside Willow Creek. It merged with the Hams Fork River just before Kemmerer, creating an emerald ribbon that curved through the valley below, another of the all-too-rare veins slicing through the desert.

If a town could have false summits, that town would be Kemmerer. From Kemmerer City Hall to my hotel, I walked a full 3.5 miles. I could have stopped for a drink. I could have grabbed something to eat at the grocery store. Instead, I trundled onward with grim determination. Often, at the end of a long and challenging walk, my body becomes awash with adrenaline in the final push, elated to have accomplished something so difficult. Today, though, the tank was empty. I just needed to reach the finish line. I almost laughed when the hotel informed me that they didn’t have a laundry room. I had promised myself that I would splurge on a washer/dryer, but instead there I was, scrubbing my way through three days’ worth of dirty clothes upon arrival. Later still, both of my hands started cramping as I was trying to make my way through a celebratory pizza, with my thumbs in particular pressing insistently to my palms and refusing to disengage.

Sitting here the following morning, I’m still too close to the walk to arrive at any sort of insightful conclusions. Here are two tentative, in-process reflections that I’m working to reconcile:

Number one: If one of my goals is to experience America as the pioneers did, following in their footsteps on the Oregon Trail, then it’s important to have at least part of that experience involve suffering and hardship. My body has become so resilient to long distances, and I’m taking advantage of enough comforts on this walk, that the adversity I experience is really quite limited. I’m playing pioneer, and I’m missing the core of the experience–the anxiety, the uncertainty, the risk of death (perceived, at least) looming around each corner. These last few days underscored for me how basic and corporeal the drive for survival is in this kind of landscape, being cut off, sometimes isolated, and entirely dependent upon pushing on, and on, and on, in pursuit of the next water source. There was a moment, five or six miles from the campground, when I started to wonder about just stopping and unrolling my tent. But there was no shade, anywhere (they don’t have shade in Wyoming), and my water was nearly gone. Stopping was not an option.

Number two: I take a lot of value in my capacity to endure. That shows up in walking, of course. Not a lot of people can or even want to walk these kinds of distances. It’s a rare quality. I can derive some pride from having developed this skill. It also manifested in day-to-day work, putting in long hours to excel as a teacher, to work on books, to tackle other projects. All of those things have brought me satisfaction and joy. And, as I’ve become motivated to do more things, and doors have opened to support me in that, I’ve needed to scrape more productivity out of the 24 hours allotted to me daily. Like walking, daily productivity is a basic mathematical equation. The more you try to accomplish, the more other things have to be cut.

We’re living through a moment where there’s a lot of discussion about productivity. I ran into three different conversations among older people in Lander–waiting to check out at the Family Dollar, gathered for coffee at McDonald’s, and even passing by a pair walking down the street–in which they were bemoaning how nobody wants to work anymore. Meanwhile, I’m coming out of a school context in which we’re ever more concerned about and attentive to student (and faculty) mental health, trying to convey a message that it’s ok to take a breath, to seek out support, to get an extension, to be imperfect. We talk about work/life balance, about not overloading oneself with obligations, about prioritizing happiness, wellbeing, and self-actualization as much as tangible, traditional accomplishments.

We’re blinded, to an almost complete degree, by how our culture has trained us to live and how we have subsequently followed through on that. It’s difficult to imagine an alternative. And so, while I intellectually recognize the absolute importance and validity of all of those discussions we’re having with young people, and I similarly recognize the limitations of how I’ve approached some aspects of my life, there’s a part of me that is nodding my head when eavesdropping on the older folks. My capacity to endure didn’t come out of nowhere. Delivering papers when I was 13, having to work 365 days a year, needing to wake up early every weekend and holiday, established a certain amount of discipline and structure. Similarly, working nights in high school and throughout college reinforced my ability to balance obligations, figuring out how to fit academic obligations around those work hours. That certainly came at a cost; my college experience was nothing like the traditional one, filled with parties and late nights in the dorms. Perhaps my entire sense of what constitutes satisfaction and joy would have shifted if I had followed a different developmental arc through those years. Again, the myopia I experience is powerful and limiting.

But it leaves me here: grappling with the rewards and hazards of being oriented towards endurance. In the days ahead–not much more than five weeks now–I’m going to complete this journey. One of the most significant accomplishments of my life to this point. My resilience and drive made it possible. I will carry the pride of this to my final days. And yet I’m not without some measure of doubt about the pitfalls of endurance. Is there a tendency bound up in this to always push harder, strain ever more against our limits, to define more and more aspects of life as “non-essential” and to then strip those away in order to accomplish that central goal? At one point does the cost outweigh the accomplishment?

This is, I realize, casting far too negative a light on things. Fear not! I’m not defeated or morose. My thumbs even work this morning. Maybe there’s something noble, though, in not emerging completely unscathed from a long walk, to be marked by the experience.