WESTWARD WOMAN My Two Thousand Mile Trek of Raw Discovery along the DONNER TRAIL eBook Barbara Maat
Download As PDF : WESTWARD WOMAN My Two Thousand Mile Trek of Raw Discovery along the DONNER TRAIL eBook Barbara Maat 
"But what will you do about rattlesnakes?" In 1978 a 37-year old woman, naive and inexperienced, leaves husband and children behind to trace the 2,000-mile pioneer Donner Trail. She walks...Alone. From her original raw journal we feel her ordeal of incapacitating foot pain, bewilderment, and fears of a woman alone in cities, back roads, deserts, wilderness... And then, as surely as the stars come out above her at night, the American people emerge one by one in a proud pageant of characters. From a dirt poor, aging Nebraska couple "Here now, you just come on in. It's all right to cry. Set right down here in our special rocker. Would the davenport be better? How about a root beer float? I'm going to make you one. I'll bet you'd like a nice foot soak. I'll make a foot soak for you." More sobs. She meets hobos, wetbacks,madams, and cowboys, vibrant all. America shines turbulent and roiling, yet ultimately benevolent. Even the crazy Nevada woman who padlocks her in a shack and the police who strip search her in mistaken identity--all are deftly and humanely introduced. Buoyed by the tender kindness of strangers, she painstakingly grows into her expanding world of hog judging, cattle branding, and arrowhead hunting. She comes to revel in being alone, sleeping miles from the nearest human. Trekking deeper through the grand western landscape, we too thrill with her on seeing the languid grace of a mountain lion, marvel at the desert mirages, and come to regret the killing of furious rattlesnakes. But what of the Donner Party who inspired her journey? Their ghostly 1846 footsteps, faint at first, echo louder as she approaches California. After following their path and schedule for six searing months, she joins them in memorial before the great wall of the Sierra which had become their death trap. After a brief pause she triumphantly completes the journey to Sacramento's Sutter's Fort in honor of the many who never reached it but so gruesomely died trying.
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WESTWARD WOMAN My Two Thousand Mile Trek of Raw Discovery along the DONNER TRAIL eBook Barbara Maat
this was well written, and kept me glued to the pages, could hardly wait to read it, hated putting it down. . .Product details
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WESTWARD WOMAN My Two Thousand Mile Trek of Raw Discovery along the DONNER TRAIL eBook Barbara Maat Reviews
Imagine walking 2,000 miles along the Donner Trail over 100 years after the Donner Party did. How would you carry your supplies in the heat? Would you be able to find food? Where would you sleep? This book was written by a woman who did just that. After reading this book, I was amazed and impressed at her fortitude, resourcefulness, and confidence in tackling this daunting trek.
One of my favorite stories in the book took place in Utah. Though she walked most of the way alone, she decided to walk with a family friend across the hot, barren Great Salt Lake Desert as a safety precaution. To prepare, he had been exercising vigorously and was in good shape. Yet he wilted in the sun and she was the one who rescued him!
There are more details about that story in the book and too many other tales about the entertaining people she met to mention. This passage indicates both how she asked strangers for help with poise and the engaging writing “The unflappable librarian maintained her controlled demeanor as she directed me to a possible camping spot a few miles out of town. She turned away expecting to have efficiently dismissed me along with my problem. But I held my ground and leaned heavily on her good manners. ‘I could never make it that far...Is there a place nearer by…maybe a history buff who’d have a space in her yard?’ ”. The librarian eventually directed her to someone who found a minister to take her in.
The author’s comfort during her trek could vary wildly. One day she might limp along with painful blisters for 20 miles. The next day she’d be in a town where the newspapers would find out her story and put her on the front page, attracting well-wishers with food, protective gear, and even free hotel rooms. The following day she’d walk out of town and sleep in a ditch alone, swiping off the ants and tolerating the mice running across her sleeping bag.
This book is not meant to be a history of the tragic Donner Party trek, but it does have tidbits about the Donners’ decision to take a shortcut to California, their laborious hacking through the trees of the Wahsatch Mountains, and the mountain meadow where many of their deaths took place.
Anyone with an interest in traveling off the beaten path, hiking cross country, setting an ambitious goal and achieving it, the heartbreaking journey of the Donner Party, or reading about a woman making her way across the U.S.A. will be entertained by this book.
After reading of the 1846 Donner Party and their tragic saga of endurance, an eastern woman at age 37 developed an intense curiosity about their westward journey. In 1978 she left behind her home, husband, and children to follow the 2,000 mile route and six month schedule of the original emigrants. She walked.
From her original journal we learn of her first bewildered and frightened steps alone in Missouri. The journey quickly becomes her own odyssey as she shares with us the ordeal of her incapacitating foot pain and her fears of vulnerability as a woman alone in a thousand of settings from cities to back roads to wilderness. We sense her emerging confidence and strength as step by step she learns to cope and expand outward into daily adventures. Ordinary Americans by the hundred gave encouragement and sustenance to this stranger passing through.
We ride with her on Kansas tractors during planting season, judge hogs in Nebraska, and help with cattle branding in Wyoming. Across Utah we share mirages in her Great Salt Desert crossing and in Nevada kill rattlesnakes while hunting arrowheads.
The grand western landscape imposes a background discipline on her journey as it did in 1846 to the Donner Party pioneers. Through her journal we sense the vastness of the Great Plains and the brutal power of the desert sun. With her we see the languid grace of a mountain lion and gulp the clear spicy air of sagebrush country.
Farm women and madams, cowboys and miners, hoboes and wetbacks, Mormons and hippies, communes and casinos, all paint a vibrant picture of America 1978, turbulent and roiling yet ultimately kind and benevolent.
I read this book after I met the 71-year-old woman who, 34 years earlier, had set out on this extraordinary journey -- a journey that was actually not out-of-the-ordinary for young women swept into the liberating possibilities of that magical decade. (Note This is Connie Barlow, age 60, writing this review.)
An extraordinary writer, Barbara Maat weaves a page-turning tale of actual journal clips, narrative prose, and precious photos of the demeanor, clothing styles, and home environments of heartland Americans (many of whose most lasting legacies may be their presence in this classic expression of a transitional moment in women's history).
I recommend this book to all generations of women today -- and those to come. Here you will encounter a supremely ordinary housewife and mother, who in 1978 at the age of 37 sets out on a solo adventure that even she herself (not to mention, family and friends!) fails to fully grasp the impetus for. I understand, though I was caught up in the spirit of the times, too. (In 1976 I adventured on a 3 month, 2,300-mile solo bicycle trip, north-south through the Rockies.)
For the first time in recorded human history, we women knew we could do and be anything. Yes, there were still extra perils for women in solo adventuring, but the spirit of the times gave Barbara and many others the sense of real possibility to just go ahead and do it.
As you will discover, Barbara was thoroughly unprepared for what lay ahead of her. But she learned and she grew (and, as you will glimpse on the cover, she finally switched from a backpack to a 2-wheeled drag-along carrier -- which not only saved her feet but provisioned her journey with a head-turning innocence that opened the hearts and doors of rural folk who regarded young backpackers and bicyclists with suspicion or rage).
Read this book and reflect back on your own internal journey during your own wildest adventure in life. For here you will enter the inner sanctum of Barbara's. Openly, she reveals her episodes of confusion and near-breakdown, while humbly describing the times in which courage and trust in the ultimate goodness of nature and human nature were absolutely demanded of her. And when the story ends, examine your own dreams Is there an adventure that calls to you? When your own life is drawing to a close, will you regret not having pursued that dream, come what may?
I will end this review with three of my favorite passages
Page 202 "The rewards, I realized that evening, were worth every inch of the struggle and went beyond all early expectations. The realization of my deep happiness came almost as a surprise revelation. It emerged uncovered in the Higgens Hotel [Wyoming], but I now see clearly that it had started growing with my first scared step in Independence, Missouri."
Page 292 "It was just my good luck that I stumbled into the home of the Neffs, where I found myself face to face with the chairman of some district against the ERA and getting the whole passionate lecture parts I and II. Kathy, an animated and intelligent woman, was speaking breathlessly, passionately while I sat dazed and tongue-tied by the onslaught. The more she talked, the more I realized that we disagreed on everything. We were at odds over welfare, farm issues, gay rights, women's issues, religion, families, on and on. The strangest thing was that the more areas of disagreement we explored, the more I realized how very much I liked her. Having finally found my tongue, we both kept up a rapid fire of exchanges, not even pausing as we climbed the stairs to get me settled, not even pausing to get supper underway, not even pausing more than an instant to answer questions fired hopefully by her children."
Page 312 journal entry "While only half awake this morning, I was slowly brought to the realization (by my inner guide) that there is a great generalization that can be made about many of the women I've met. They are apparently more eager to get out and explore life than their husbands. They are stifled and frustrated and bored and held back. They are the closet adventurers. In those situtions where the woman holds back the husband, one is immediately sympathetic to the husband, but somehow one overlooks the reverse. The great parade of closet adventurers, Thelma, Ruby, LaVonne, JoAnn, Kathy, Beverly, Erma Becky, Rose and on and on. I'll have to get out my list and examine it all the way."
this was well written, and kept me glued to the pages, could hardly wait to read it, hated putting it down. . .
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