Going West

I spent my Monday as a pioneer traveling with my family on the Oregon Trail. There were several families traveling together and instead of being a Liinpaa, for a day, I was a McAllister. This trip, crammed into a day, used to take months for families to travel from Missouri River to Oregon City.

Before we left on our journey, we used our last pennies to buy some supplies for the long trip; two oxen, flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, gun powder, a rifle, a knife, a lantern and blankets to prepare for the 2,000 mile travel that would take us 4 to 6 months if we would even make it alive through the narrow passages, river crossings, drought, contaminated water and bandits. Illness would be lurking over our shoulders as cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery were common causes of death on the Oregon Trail. But we had no choice, we had to go as there was no future for us in the East. West was the land of hope, the promise of a better life.

During our travels our friends lost an ox after it got loose and ate wild parsnips. If you didn’t know, wild parsnips are poisonous so don’t eat them. We had a couple of wagons with broken wheels that we had to repair, and some of our own cattle died after drinking contaminated water before we could stop them. There was that horrible night, our entire group almost died due to a flash flood. This trip was all about decisions and this was the one that proved to be a wrong one. That evening we were tired, and chose not to cross a river but instead spend the night and wait until morning when we would have light. We had no idea it was going to rain heavily that night, neither did we know that this place would flood so easily. We managed to get across the water last minute before drowning, but all our dry goods got wet. After this, we were running so low on food supplies that I was sure we were never going to make it. Can you imagine traveling for days on just one biscuit to share with your family? Just when all hope was lost we came to a stream so full of salmon that we could have almost walked on the fish. That day we used our blankets and pillow cases to catch fish, what a lucky day even though we had quite smelly blankets for a while but we didn’t care, we finally had food.

In the end, all of us made it to the Willamette Valley but it wasn’t an easy journey. My daughter Elizabeth fell off the wagon and the wheel crushed her leg. I’m not sure if she will ever walk again, but I’m forever thankful for our wagon master deciding to stop our journey for 3 days to let her heal a bit after the accident. For the remaining journey she was to travel inside the wagon and the rest of our family had to take care of carrying water.

After arriving in the beautiful valley just about 10,000 steps later, we started building our new homestead out of Lincoln logs, churned some butter to eat on crackers, boy did it taste good! Life was good, the sun was shining after wet and gloomy morning, and we were ready to start a new life in the West.

Reenacting the Oregon Trail is an awesome way to teach our children about the history of our nation. I think it was amazing for them to get to experience a tiny slice from what it was like to travel across the continent without knowing what would happen next. Redmond Parks and Rec did an amazing job with this program.

Part of the journey from Juel Park to Farrell McWhirter Park and back, I walked behind our little pioneers watching them take turns in pulling their wagons, helping each other maneuver through tricky places, identify edible plants and solve the problems thrown at them during the walk. As we were walking all of the other parents were reflecting on their own memories of this same history lesson. One of the moms told us how some of her classmates were still bitter about the choices their wagon master had made as it had led to their death of typhoid fever. One said she still remembered how they died after drinking contaminated water. Today’s version is a bit more forgiving and no one died. I wish there would have been something like this when I went to school! I learned a lot on my day walking down the Oregon Trail as a McAllister.

Okay, I know you are waiting for the point of this story, the moment when I tie this to real estate or how the West Coast has become one of the most wanted places to live. It has for sure but this story isn’t going there. Neither am I steering toward the excellence of our School District and public schools. I wrote this blog post merely because there is a young man, expecting to read about how it was on the Oregon Trail, and I am so very taken to have a young reader like him that I immediately promised to write about it.

So, this post is for you Alex! I for sure hope you had as much fun on the trail as I did!