Wintertide

 

By: Hunter Christian

 

Foreword

Donner's Sermon at Independence

Destiny manifest forespoken our rightful bounty
Westward bound we risk our futures, our fortunes, and our very lives

From scattered a field we congregate from myriad a state and county

So bound together, that if one should thrive, then all shall thrive
If one fails, we all fail

To this we do avail

*

We heeded the call to America's Midwest
Henceforth we shall join forces
Of the western wilds we must tame to best
Though our myriad stations brought us here via myriad courses;
with pride to each other we proudly attest,
we giveth our women and children, our gold and silver, our livestock and horses,
and all that implies, and all the rest
Never given in vain, nor in jest

 

*

From heretofore, to forevermore, to relinquish, to vanquish, the singular chore;
we ally with one another in this righteous, magnanimous, and noble accord
In one we fail, in many we afford
By the grace of God, our savior, the Almighty, our Lord

To honor your only begotten son
To never falter the forgotten ones
We band together our vocation, our wares, our currency, our funds
In search of a better morrow
Devoid of fettered sorrow
May no member beggar nor borrow

May our fortunes hath sown
Reap a bountiful harvest grown
In the name of our Lord, Amen

To the heavenly bounty of California, from whence the golden sun sets, may we, in your name, Dear Lord, humbly ascend
For we are your flock, and you are our shepherd, whom shepherds and tends
For that and so much more, we thank thee Dear Lord above, hallelujah, Amen.

 

PART I

Our party lost its way o'er Hastings Crossing
Trepidation nary set in crossing the Wasatch;
with Utah's plentiful landscape for restful dossing,
where all along shallow banks lay our supper's catch,
O' what a mighty batch –
caught upon a whipping rod and line's bowed end,
a bounty of Lahontan cutthroat trout from the crisp flow of the Humboldt River,
to feed our waiting bellies the raging rapids thankfully did send

*

Our travail made all able-bodied men haulage striver;
with a herd of cattle to shepherd and to tend,
o'er rugged lands to California for survival’s sake our wares must be delivered,
and with naught a single personage to lend,
all muscles were called upon to naught want, but to be wanton givers,
as the wagons bogged down at the last of the river's bends,
wherein frigid downpours strong bodies quivered and shivered,
as rainwaters swelled upriver volumes that pushed the swell downriver

*

Yes! Cold men shivered and quivered,
still we hollered “heave” and “ho,”
we pushed wagons through mud gauntlets that lined that damned road that sidled alongside the Humboldt River,
we made those bastards Go!

*

Gone to where the Humboldt’s waters flowed,
o'er rocks and stones,
o'er small pebbles and bones,
shifting downriver sand and silt,
to a deliverance thereupon gathered were the substances upon which cosmopolitan cities have been built,
even the architectural beauty that enticed the Tower of Pisa to lean and to tilt

*

Lessening the burden of guilt,
so too we honored gravity in efforts to portage our livelihoods westward in tow,
before the pedals of springtime flowers had begun to wilt,
to an unknown destination we all prayed it would, it could, become known,
to us all,
before the first snow of the Sierra Nevada's fall

Whence upon the wind death rattles rattled
Foretold within the wind's first sullen chill,
Cloaked in black garb, with a sharpened scythe held high, the shadowy figure sat saddled,
upon his ebony horse that stood proudly tall, muscles flexed, and ominously still,
The Grim Reaper hath heard death's sweet come-hither call called,
within the void of a vacated life he rode a fortnight to fill
Even though the reader here may be rightfully appalled
Death galloped double time towards the travelers to befall, to fulfill,
As the shadowy rider rode on the torrent of a foretoken Wintertide,
It was inevitable that so many travelers who welcomed California alive and well,
would soon crossover to the inevitable “Other side,”
inevitably uncertainty embraced circumstances that from an uncertain hell,
fell hard upon the Donner Party as the unthinkable befell,
almost decimating everybody, and everyone, who had a tale to tell

 

PART II

Reed Journal Entry

In California, where green grasses hath grown
For centuries upon yore
Grown beneath a perennial sun perennially shone
Where a Mediterranean climate-like wind bastes the central coast's shore
May I lay me down oh Lord
May I lay down my bloodied sword
For this wandering soldier hath come home
From battles far afield I did roam
For the lives I've taken
Dear God, may I repent and atone
Please Lord, of my life, I beg I'm naught forsaken
May my sins wash away in an awash of calming sea foam
Within the lush Californian ground
May my life's blood be planted
May my plans be grounded and sound
O' Lord, may this prayer be so thankfully granted
May my homestead humbly prosper indeed
May I plant a hearty seed
For my family named Reed

 

PART III

There before the wilderness gave-way to barren desert land;
comprising the Great Salt Lake Desert,
an inhospitable terrain that taxed both beast and man,
from whence bewilderment arose in concert

*

Some snide, some tense;
Questions arose about the deviation from the course beset upon in Missouri at Independence

Some alert, some just curt;
in conjunction with our leaders assailed confidence, questions were asked such as, “Why from the trusted Oregon Trail did we so wantonly avert”?

To calm growing fears,
Mr. Reed and Mr. Donner, both capable, learned gents,
with their support falling steadily into irretrievable arrears,
convened in quietly solemn audience,
both equal peers,
charged with the duty to affirm,
when most happily stayed middling upon the fence
charged with the wherewithal to reaffirm,
to sure up waning confidence

*

Unbeknownst to both brave men,
The leadership of one of them would be short-lived
What should've, or would've, or could've been,
Needn't have been rehashed nor relived
Both embarked on missions mired in vanity,
And when vanity bears envy – one of seven deadly sins
To wit, the party embarked on a journey of insanity
And that's the impetus of how their doomed journey did fatefully begin

 

PART IV

Alongside his horse hobbled a scraggly old mutt;
as Donner rode onward to locate Hastings in efforts to alert,
the veteran surveyor concerning his westward bound shortcut,
and to seek solace from the party's fruitless search,
for to and fro went the road,
as signage long ago fallen from dying birch,
consequently, with greater hardship infused,
the Devil became so amused,
he did prod and goad,
he stealthily hid the trajectory of the road,
like a nighthawk eyeing prey from a woodland perch,
the hidden trail sent the wagon train headlong down into a hellish lurch

*

Squashed trodden under a wagon's wheel,
drowned beneath went lowly toad,
Forks, bends, overgrowth, underbrush, and the like, further helped to conceal,
The way of that God forsaken road

*

Stuck in muddy ruts,
lost of a modicum of mean, medium, nor mode,
since no calculus of the human condition ever existed,
no variables could have supplanted the downtrodden existence that persistently persisted,
through the myriad turns betwixt twists so fervently twisted

*

With words vehemently staid
“Stay the course” their mantra became
Halt naught the party resisted
Yet, halted they were anyhow
If somehow their vanity insisted

*

Foolhardy turns left the traveler's minds weary and twisted
Even when misty eyes too bleary to survey ahead were wiped free
Presented with an obvious bend in the road, somehow, someway, the team still readily missed it,
The signs real and imagined, evident and scant,
A happenstance of circumstance,
when laboriously labored minds turned from reasoned thought to heated rants

 

PART V

A Letter Home

 

Dearest Folks,

The wilderness took its toll
Each actor played his role
The women on bended knee applying salve to venomous bites from ravenous fire ants
Shorn from many a men were his simple wares, his shirt, his boots, his undergarments, his woolen pants
All the “can do's” versus the “can'ts”
The ubiquitous bitching and moaning
To “man-up” sent lesser men on his way cursing and groaning
The young men paying unpayable dues
Logs rolled into lines to serve as pews
The wagon train trudging on in ranks of twos
The sun so sweltering that drenching perspiration will not cease
The rash that develops in a body's nether-region – crease by crease
The axle that squeaks in need of grease
The mosquitos that bite
When malaria’s purge sets folks affright
The calm in a field of fireflies light
The young mother who hears her last rites
When tainted wine makes an old man lose his sight
The plight of a crop's deadly blight
All the wickedness that creeps around in the night

*

In 1848, the list of pitfalls went on and on;
as sure as the witching hour surceases at dawn,
as sure as the rook, bishop, knight, queen, or king outranks the lowly pawn,
as sure as the mountain lion hunts down the frail spotted fawn,
as sure as the whore will always have her willing John,
as sure as the weak will always find balance in another's brawn

*

In the mid-19th century, deathly hallows lay at every turn;
just as in Salem, the accused witches did viciously burn,
ashes to ashes and dust to dust
The ashes that lay fallow in the urn

*

For the Donner Party, the indiscernible road before them feigned discerned
The mud-hardened ruts scrambled weak stomach acid
The rocking wagon made weaker bellies churn
Save for the handful of children who purported seafaring games to remain timidly placid
Placid like the pastor delivering his Sunday sermon from a Harvard lectern
Within the horn the Native Americans carried,
the pale blue glow of wanton fire still burned,
perhaps to light the way for the dead once they were given their Last Rites then buried

Your Son with Saddest Regrets,
Robert

 

PART VI

Embittered folks began to demand recompense
As angry men had begun to willfully assert;
verbal demands commanded with ever increased confidence
As if it were a matter of just commonsense

*

Of the Native Americans, persistent Christians desired “the savages” relent and convert
None ever converted
Although of their spirituality, the white man so readily castigated and perverted

*

The members of the party believed;
that God had predestined them for greatness;
It was readily perceived;
that they were God’s chosen ones,
his preferred daughters and sons

*

Aloft went a hurried flurry of cascading voices,
Tacitly heard –
“the Lord is my shepherd”
“I shall naught want”
Yet, humility came and went per audience and its purview
O’ yes indeed, judgmental ways they did flaunt
So did the many along with the few
Towards the heathen, with hellfire they did unabashedly tease, torment, and taunt

*

So it went, that the westward bound travelers believed,
that Jesus Christ died for only the white man’s original sin,
that of the Virgin Mary, he was immaculately conceived,
and what lay in their pale white skin,
was this righteous favor,
endowed unto them by the grace of the Earth’s omnipotent creator;
their Lord, their God the Almighty
all wrapped up in a holy book bespoken to them alone in tidings narcissistic and tidy

*

Henceforth, the road rode long from the perch upon where they sat
Still, to the Lord in earnest they conferred about this and that
Bookended by Amen after Amen
And, then;
Came the unseemly deed of the military veteran Mr. Reed;
Who in a spat;
killed one Mr. Snyder
and that was that

 

PART VII

The Hangman's Jury

Driving a dagger into the aforementioned Snyder longways just below the man's collarbone
As such, an unpunishable offense,
with no remedy forcing Reed to atone,
and with no jurisprudence,
nor right to counsel, legal redress, or a defense
For within the Mexican Territory;
U.S. law had no authority

*

Just as the crackling fire's flames create;
vigilante justice rose like embers,
a justice of man with no known predate
So it rose amongst the lesser Godlike of the party's members
Some of the wayward type even took to fashioning a ready noose;
thus taken henceforth, to test its value, its dutiful worth,
upon hundred pound burlap sacks of barley and grain,
sacks of hefty girth,
to assay, to ascertain,
if the noose,
had been fashioned with a knot a tad too tight
or perhaps, just a bit too loose,
or was it tied dead to rites,
and therefore, perfectly and deadly tight

*

To carry out their vigilante deed;
some folks favored a goodly and sturdy tree;
neither too green nor too aged
See, Reed had scorned too many to ever be set free
Far too many had been enraged
By the persnickety, uppity, and braggadocios Reed

*

Somehow, cooler heads prevailed
Perhaps in the end;
an even crueler justice entailed
To no sentimentality, would the wilds bend
So, onto the wilds, in banishment the troop did send
The man called Reed
For perpetrating a wicked, wicked deed
Amongst so many long since cataloged
As many as, deep in the mud, the wagon wheels became so stubbornly bogged

*

The members had grown angry with shone defiance;
stripping Reed of past military glory,
exiling the usurped leader from the foretoken, forsaken alliance
With Reed banished without his family for the murder of Snyder;
the lead fell to Mr. Donner's young rider
By then, too much misfortune had come to pass
Could the misfortune last?

*

Fortunes soon turned ever so dire
Soon after Reed departed, so many doomed souls prayed their last
With no food, no warmth, even frigid felt the fire
What came to fruition, was Manifest Destiny aghast
Though blame naught Hastings the liar
Since the myriad transgressions of the forlorn party are well known to the past
So long ago acted out by its dutiful cast
Save for the ghosts whom still roam California's Donner's Pass

 

PART VIII(a.)

A Last Journal Entry

Somewhere here just below Lake Truckee
Wintertide snows blow whiteouts along this mountainside
Blankets of ivory abound as far as the eye can see
Bleary eyed men cannot see clearly to ride

*

Our Sierra Nevada's campsite sunken into a cottony dream
A frozen icy layer coats my horse's coarse hide
Fallen lame ahead are the wagons’ hearty lead team
Hunger pangs deride
Empty starving bodies inside

*

Snowcaps are crystalline agleam
Upon what just was a lush summertime garden
Now, in God's abandon our courage is beseem
Our mountain stream guide to our right continues to harden –
Fallen snows, howling winds, befallen woes
The stream guides our way to warmth in a coastal California's winter pardon
Once frozen through
A fate only a springtime thaw may undo
Once frozen and snow blankets its line
To disheartening truths we shall be resigned

*

Bogged down in drifts of newly fallen powder
The two Miwoks horns long since snuffed of its fire
Minute by minute
Hour after hour
Our situation grows dire

*

Here, amidst the wild
A young mother bares dried breasts to a crying child
To help the older children cope
We tell them of the seventeen soldiers of hope
Who have gone onward in search of rescue
With promises of their return with help in a short week or two

 

PART VIII(b.)

The Forlorn Hope

The story told to children to help them cope
Soon turned into “The Forlorn Hope”
Only six resilient folks would survive
Eleven others would never leave the Sierras alive

*

The two Native Americans were shot for food
By a desperate brood
So many starving souls ate their own kind
When death throes addled their tormented minds

*

Cannibalism beset the forlorn Donner Party
A doomed lot
Save for a few of the very most hearty
Befalling the lot was the most ghastly of horrors that ever wrought
A lot of folks so longingly fraught

 

EPILOGUE

An Unknown Author

Someday when you traverse the Sierras through California's Donner Pass
Remember those doomed folks so sadly wrought
Remember to undertake the history those forsaken folks sought
Remember how so many folks breathed their last
When in the Autumn of 1848,
a westward bounty of dreamers dreamt of the Pacific shores alas
Yet, in those dreams dreaded stead,
befell nightmares so aghast
When so many befallen dead,
were forsaken, placed asunder, then into the frigid wilds, so viciously cast

*

So coldly went their fate
When the gold rush year of 1849,
so boldly turned over the year from that fateful year of 1848
From one time and place, to another place and another time
Times when dark tales of their imminent demise were told to entice eager minds,
Told to those idle minds to tantalize, to energize, to invigorate
Do remember how frigid were their doomed fates,
during that fateful winter of 1848

*

Hear the voices
Understand their choices
Feel their wants and cares
Listen diligently to their prayers
Can you see their faces?
See their trail on the map and how in contemplation your finger slowly traces

*

Remember how the wicked snow did blow
Remember how the fire in the horn did glow
Remember when their fates led them to be fatefully caught;
within the deathly throes of frozen wintry snows,
Remember the haunted howl of a Wintertide's wind,
Remember from whence they did begin
Remember how frightened, alone, and wrought,
Those brave travelers felt when faced with the horrifying and deadly onslaught
Of a haunting Wintertide
The year was 1848
The year so many westward travelers died
The death toll was great
So, the lesser player did yield
And, then the victor declared “checkmate”.

(Wintertide, November 2017)