The Dragon's Muse

Legends of the West

We went to Reno last weekend (trip report here, photos here and here) and, in Virginia City, a shopkeeper recommended a CD to me: Legends of the West, by the Comstock Cowboys. (It's a great CD) I've always had a fondness for songs of the Old West, like "Streets of Laredo", the "Wayward Wind", and "Cool Water". This album has them all, and as I'm sitting here listening to it, I'm reminded of my enduring love of the West. Not the West Coast necessarily, but the "West". The pioneers and their covered wagons, leaving everything they knew behind for a dream -- the "see the Elephant". The cowboys, the miners, the fortune seekers, and those people that were here before them. In places like Virginia City NV, that spirit is still at the surface. You can feel it, and if you're very still, sometimes you can see it. If you find a section of the Oregon Trail, the wagon ruts still visible all this time later, you can feel it too. You wonder what had to be left off the wagons in that spot, did they leave a loved one who died on the journey, buried somewhere near by?

I finally got to see Grass Valley, where my great-grandmother was born in 1865, and I wondered what her parents felt as they cleared the great Sierras, and in the more gentle foothills, decided to settle. And what made them pull up stakes less than a decade later, to brave the wilds of Northern British Columbia. I've been over Donner Pass so many times, being a native of California, and I've always wondered what it must have been like, hauling wagons over the treacherous passes of the Sierras. It seems so impossible, yet thousands upon thousands did it. But it's only been in the last year that I discovered I had a connection to those people in those wagon trains. Maybe some genetic memory knew what I consciously did not. In some ways, that knowledge has made me feel more at home here than I did before. I feel like I have roots that go deeper than just the surface of this nutty state. There's more here than just the shallow surface, there's a spirit here in the West that delves as deep as the roots of the Sierras. A spirit that's forged in tears, sorrow, hope, and faith.

There's a song on the CD that inspired the above (for good or ill!)

"But the sun shines in San Luis Obispo. In the valley where the gentle breezes blow. California where we start our lives over. If we make it through the high Sierra snow.

The deadly winds did blow in all its fury. You couldn't see your hand before your face. We knew we had to dig in for winter. Or die here in this God forsaking place.

All night long we heard the children crying. As the mothers tried their best to keep them warm. In the morning, the cattle they were scattered. As we prayed to go and braced for another storm.

But the sun shines in San Luis Obispo. In the valley where the gentle breezes blow. California where we start our lives over. If we make it through the high Sierra snow."

Posted by Ith at May 22, 2003 5:15 AM