Along the Oregon Trail

Clouds in cooling sheets are held aloft above the flatlands, above the footprints and bones of migrants—animal and human— preserved below pavement, insulated from predators and unrelenting sun.

Here, the roots of survival met the impulse of prayer, ever plodding toward the mountains, rubbing out laughter and resolve. Death sinking one in ten with each slow turn of wagon wheels, digging deeper into the fibers of prairie grass over the nation’s longest graveyard.

Today, a concrete ribbon erases all doubt. We cruise cooled and undusted, past center pivots and greenness, along the Platte. Only sagebrush under the rain shadow recalls that long-ago promise. Theirs was a lone destiny—like these cattle next to a fence line—lumbering on in formation.