A Long Stretch of Trail

As I've mentioned before, perhaps ad nauseam, I was born and raised in Idaho. I've lived here all my life, and while I could do what I do anywhere, I'm pretty sure I would leave Idaho kicking and screaming.

Southern Idaho is high desert country. I'm talking sagebrush and jack rabbits and rattlesnakes. Not much would be here if it weren't for the Snake River that "snakes" across the lower part of the state, providing water for the rich volcanic soil, turning it from land only suited for antelope and ground squirrels into productive farmland. Although I'm a mountain girl, through and through, the high desert does have a beauty of its own. But sometimes it's one a person has to look for.

I-84 cuts across the lower part of Idaho, often not far from the Snake River. It also runs close, in many places, to the old Oregon Trail. I learned this summer that I have a relative buried at Three Island Crossing (Glens Ferry, Idaho), the first place on the Oregon Trail where travelers crossed the Snake River in Idaho. Wow! I'd love to know more of that story. Maybe someday....

Mountain Home is 45 miles southeast of Boise, and that stretch of I-84 follows the Oregon Trail closely. To the north, you can see the brown foothills with mountains beyond (mountains that take you all the way to Canada, the largest stretch of wilderness area in the lower 48), but mostly all you see is flat land and sagebrush. I've driven this stretch of highway dozens, maybe hundreds, of time in my life. It always feels never-ending, even when I'm zipping along at 75 mph. And it always makes me think of those hardier souls who crossed here in wagons, on foot, and on horseback at the rate of about 10 to 15 miles per day. What I cross in under an hour took them at least four to five days, depending upon how much livestock they were driving with them, not to mention if they had trouble with a wagon.

Even today, there is something quite wonderful about rounding that last corner and topping that last rise that brings the Boise valley into view. "Les bois! Les bois!" the French fur trappers cried in the early 1800's when they saw it. "The trees! The trees!" And thus Boise got its name. Not because there were as many trees as there are today, but because after so much desert, the trees that lined the Boise River were a very welcome sight. When I round that corner and top that rise and see the Boise Front (the mountain range the city bumps up against), I again think of those hardy souls on those many wagon trains, seeing the trees and the river and knowing they would find respite here before pushing on to Oregon.

I've joked before that if settling the west had been up to me, we would all still be living on the east coast (or back in England or Ireland or Sweden). But I think I'm wrong. I think I'm selling myself short. My ancestors boarded those old sailing ships in the 1700s and 1800s to come to America. {{Oooh, I'm feeling seasick.}} Some fought in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 and the Civil War. And eventually, they pushed West. By wagon train. By rail. By an old Model T.

And because of them, I was born in Idaho near the Snake River and the Oregon Trail. Is it any wonder I write historical fiction? There are so many stories to be told about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

I read a great quote yesterday that I will close with. James L. Swanson has written non-fiction books about Abraham Lincoln and others (his latest is Bloody Crimes). Now he's trying his hand at a novel. In the article, the interviewer asks "Do you think it's easier to make up a fictional crime or to do all the research?" (Note: The interviewer obviously doesn't realize how much research goes into fiction.) Mr. Swanson answered: "One of the advantages of history is that other people have made up the plot for you." I love that!

~robin