Same Landscape…160 years later

Vicki Barbour shares her Across the Plains reflections.

What I have really appreciated about this trip is seeing the same landscape as William did. For so much of it there have been no buildings and people - particularly yesterday in Wyoming and Southern Idaho. The landscape hasn’t changed over the last 160 years! Some people think/judge that those areas are boring and there’s nothing to see. And yet there is so much history! It gives me pause to not be quick to judge any landscape as boring and worthless.

I also loved William’s observation about human nature on August 14. “As we nooned today by the side of the river an Indian sat upon a rock on the opposite shore, viewing us in silence. One of our men remarked what a pleasure it would be to take his rifle and put a ball through him and see him drop over. Inhuman wrench! Though a fair representative of the class of whites in immediate contact with the Indians, who regard them as no more than the wild beasts of the mountains, and do not hesitate on slight provocation or for mere amusement to shoot them down, which outraged is avenged, not always upon the perpetrator, but upon the first white man who unfortunately falls in the way of the exasperated friends of the murdered Indian; this again is returned by an attempted annihilation of the whole tribe or race. Thus it goes on, crime following crime and blood paying the price of blood, and thus it will until the golden rule can be instilled into the hearts of the savage red man and the worse than savage white.”

The passage of crime following crime based on hate of someone different is just as pertinent today as then. If only ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ can fill everyone’s heart!