It is Done With Them.

 

 

It is Done With Them.

 

“Looking eastward from the summit of Pacheco Pass one shining morning, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most beautiful I have ever beheld.”

 

From John Muir, “The Mountains of California .”

 

 

Decades after

Emigrants died at Donner Lake

The wind moves like a dancing calf

In a field in Verdi.

It kicks and prances in the dust

(That could have been a wagon trail)

Under gathering clouds.

 

The "Snowy Range”

Must have looked formidable to them, these people

Who had followed the Humbolt

To this bitter place.

 

The wind

In the field in Verdi

Could have blown on the canvass of their wagons

It could have tousled the hair of the women and children

It could have made scarves dance around

The necks of the men

As they looked up the mouth

Of that winding pass

Wondering if the wagons could make it.

 

Today SUV’s and campers

Amble in the sun

Up that winding route to Truckee

Light flashing on tinted glass

And polished metal,

But the Donner Party would have heard

The muted grunt

Of oxen only

And the constant knock of wheels

On rocks and dirt.

 

The crest of these mountains

That they faced

Runs along the eastern edge of the range.

Rivers spilling west drain into the Pacific.

Rivers tumbling east

Are caught in the Great Basin and go nowhere.

 

They had no idea

That winter would witch them

Into such a world of ice and horror.

They followed the Truckee

Into a gathering storm

The clouds high

And cold,

 

And over half died there.

 

What did they see

Preserved beyond that frozen place?

What vision still beckoned, what idea

Haunted them by the sputtering fires,

Huddled under the trees at Donner Lake,

What did their tired red eyes imagine

In the cold waters of Alder Creek?

 

As winter

Brushed the life from them

And necessity moved their flesh

From bone to pot,

Did the clouds part and snow

Drift down glittering in the light one day

And was that vision still there

Like a rag tattered with grease and blood?

 

Once past those peaks

The land takes a brisk descent

And spills towards the Pacific.

Could they smell the ocean

Or hear sea birds

Under their poor canopies

Groaning with the weight of snow?

 

What did they see

The moment they put human flesh to teeth

As winter choked the pass

And their mouths filled with

The bitter taste

Of utter failure?

 

In a field

Where their wagons must have turned

To challenge the merciless Sierra Nevada

The wind

Like a cavorting calf

Sweeps the Emigrants’ path clear once more

As if Nature is saying,

 

It is done with them.