A Clearing in the Wild (28 page)

“We’re making good noise, so I don’t think they bother. I can hardly wait for you to see this new land,
Liebchen
.”

As we walked, I wondered if Moses felt this way leading his people through the desert, sure of the destination but uncertain of the people’s readiness for what goodness and trials lay beyond. I thought to mention this perspective to Christian but abstained. He seemed so happy even as the sweat dripped from him and tiny gnats pushed at his face.

“This is a land worthy of God’s work,” he said as we chewed on hard biscuits when we nooned.

What was one woman’s cautious voice against such enthusiasms? I
had nothing to say. The scouts’ confidence carried me along on this craft without a compass.

Twelve days after leaving Steilacoom, we reached the Willapa River. We approached the stream from the east near a bend, so at first it looked tame enough and not particularly swift. A flat spread out from the water’s edge, and with sweeping arms, Christian told me, “Here’s where we’ll make our mark then.”

“Right on this bend? This river?”

Narrow meadows, what was once the river’s bed, no doubt, lined the river, bearing tall grass and purple flowers. The land we could cultivate at least. The soil looked black when I kicked at a clump of the grass to smell and taste the earth.

“And see, there are plenty of trees to log, for building houses. All we need is here,” Christian said.

I looked up at the tops of the trees, nearly stumbling backward. Some stood more than two hundred feet high, making my neck ache as I gazed at their tops. Our tiny saws and axes would be but mosquito bites to the tough, long arms of the trunks that rose before us.

“And this river goes right to the sea, maybe fifteen or twenty miles west at most. We can float logs down, dig for clams at the ocean, have plenty of seafood to add to game. This river lures fish in during the season, Swan tells us. The bounty God has led us to …” Christian stood teary-eyed.

He’s in love with this landscape, this formidable, dark, dense landscape
.

Christian had no doubts, and the man Swan was spoken of as someone wiser than Moses had been. When we made our way toward
a small clearing cut back into timber around the bend, my doubts lessened a little as well. For there rose a sturdy log house almost as large as the surgeon’s quarters at the fort. Best of all, a woman holding a bucket in her hand stood before it.

Her name was Sarah Woodard. She was but a child, maybe fifteen, with hair the color of pale butter and eyes such a deep blue they looked black at times. Her muscled arms reflected hard work. Sarah and her husband invited us to stay with them at this river crossing for the night. Christian hesitated. In German he said, “We should not get too close to those around here.” But Adam said accepting generosity was a kindness in return. I rejoiced. Here lay a feather tick to lie on. We herded the goat in with the Woodard cow and its calf.
They own a cow!

“We brought it up from California, put onto a ship, and here it is,” Sarah’s husband said when I commented about the animal. “A brute bred her back so we have another increase next year. We get to keep what we raise, not like those folks who worked for Hudson’s Bay Company.”

I vowed to have Christian order a cow from California for us. If he intended to send products out on the tide, then south by ship, then we could get them north to ease our lives too. I never thought I’d say it, but travel by ship would be so much easier than what we’d been through overland on what Christian called our “Dutch Trail.”

“Why didn’t you propose to have the Bethel Colony come out by ship?” I asked Christian. We leaned against a tree at Woodard’s Landing, as the place was known. Andy played with the Woodards’ dog. The pup brought sticks to him that Andy threw, the makeshift toy landing not far beyond his toes. I shooed the dog back when it started to lick Andy’s hair as he sat. “It would be so much easier than to come overland
with wagons and stock.” I hesitated, then said, “I wonder how the wagons will come through that trail we made. At the first windstorm, you’ll have to go back and reopen it.”

“You worry over much,” he told me. “We’ll bring them up the Cowlitz River, as we came in canoes, but only as far north as the Chehalis River. Then it’s a short portage onto the Willapa, and they’ll be right here, just as we need them to be.” I still didn’t see how the wagons would come up that Cowlitz trail, but Christian’s tone suggested little patience for my questions.

I changed my son’s diaper. At least the area offered an abundance of moss for his diaper. I walked to the river and rinsed the cloth, then laid it over a blackberry bramble to dry, checking the ripeness of the berries as I did. It was August. They were ripe enough for pies.

“They’ll have no need for wagons here,” Christian said when I came back. He’d been thinking of our conversation. He used his preacher voice. “Indeed. All produce and people will go by water to market. Wilhelm’s group can sell their wagons in Portland. It will mean more money to purchase grain and other things needed to tide us through the winter.”

“But if we’ve no need for wagons, why not tell the colony to come by ship?”

“Too expensive. Besides, we can use the plows and other personal items they bring. The returning scouts will tell them what we need. Axes, saws, hammers, plows, scythes, seeds.”

I wondered if someone would bring out trunks of clothing for us and the other scouts who remained here.
Or perhaps we will return
. That thought proved fleeting as I watched my husband scan this landscape, take some measure of contentment that he had found what he considered the perfect place for the colony.

Whichever scouts returned would have to start back soon in order
to be in Missouri before the snow fell. I wanted to talk about that but instead I asked, “And what will the wagon makers do here when they arrive?”

I thought of my brother Jonathan apprenticing as a wagon maker. That had been his plan, to make wagons and sell them to those coming west, his contribution to the colony an important one.

“Maybe they’ll build boats,” Christian said, his annoyance obvious in his tone. “Or furniture. Each house will need furniture. We adapt in the colony,
Liebchen.
”

Would wintering with the Woodards be an adaptation? We surely couldn’t work through the wind and rains of winter to build. But if I said that now, he’d think I coveted comfort. I didn’t want any suggestion of weakness, or Christian might consider sending Andy and me back with the scouts—without him.

Living in Bethel I knew most everyone. Maybe due to my father’s influence, or perhaps because I paid attention to new babies born and did what I could to help at the harvests, adapted, and went where I was told. They were like a family, each willing to help the other no matter what. We were asked to be in service to others, to be ready on Judgment Day to face our Maker and say we had tended to widows and orphans and brought in new sheep to the flock.

Since we’d left Bethel, I’d met dozens of people, some with names I now couldn’t remember and some on the wagon trains we briefly joined. We might have nooned with them, listened to their stories and then moved on. The names and faces ran together for me like birds along a rock fence. Maybe our journey intrigued them; maybe they found sojourners in the Lord’s vineyard to be of interest. I didn’t feel a
part of any community with them because we didn’t stay in one place together, we didn’t share both hardships and joys. A community, even a colony, needed those shared times to bind it together.

I hoped there would be a kind of town when we finally settled. One family named Woodard, a woman plus nine scouts, and a child hardly seemed enough to make up a town. Christian would say our community would arrive full force with the Bethelites and that I must be patient and wait.

But then one morning in late August 1854, even this small fragile community changed.

“Reasonably, it must be George Link,” Adam Schuele said in response to the question Christian posed that morning about who would return. “George has a hunter’s eye and can repair anything, wagon wheels especially. He can bring the others here safely.”

John Genger was chosen along with George, or at least his name came next and he nodded. “We’ve spent what we must to secure the land, and we will depend on the bounty here for the rest. Essentials you can purchase from Woodards’ store, but keep it minimal. There’ll be little accounting needed for a time. We need to be sure to have money to bring the first group out while the rest remain at their posts, working.”

“Perhaps you should go back with them,” Christian said.

Andy rode on my knee, and I bounced him before looking to see who the third person chosen would be. When I lifted my eyes I saw that that the scouts looked at me.

“You’d consider returning?” I asked my husband. He shook his head, no, and in an instant I realized I’d become complacent with my plans. I remembered my earlier vow to do what I could to get Christian to be one of the scouts to go back to Bethel, but the months across the trail and the month here at this Willapa site told me my husband’s devotion went to the success of the western colony and that required his
effort here. This was his mission, his passion. He’d never desert it, not even for a season. I hadn’t imagined that he’d try to send me away.

I took a risk. “Will the scouts return by ship?” I asked. I swallowed hard.

“Maybe we should reconsider returning by sea,” Joe Knight said. “It would be less dangerous, perhaps even quicker.” He raised his pointing finger to emphasize his point.

“There, you see?” I said. “A sea voyage would shorten time.”

“
Nein
,” Christian said. “The expense is too great. Indeed, I’m surprised you’d suggest an ocean voyage knowing how you feel about water.”

“I only want to be … cooperative.”

“You raise unnecessary issues.”

Adam Knight, his eyes cast down, waited to speak. These men were not accustomed to overhearing disagreements between husbands and wives. “Overland is best,” Adam said then. “So the Bethelites will have the latest information about the travel. Some may come back to Willapa by ship, and this is good. But to return, the expense is less to go back the way we came.”

“It would be better if you returned, Emma,” Christian said. “This will be a harsh winter here, everything unsettled. We may need to live in tent houses. Perhaps we could find the resources, John, for fare back by ship?”

The mere thought of me riding those ocean waves without my husband at my side churned my stomach.

“We could consider—”

“No, please,” I said. My husband prepared to send me back, get me out of his way so he could stay devoted to his first love and, worse, would take the idea of a trip around the Horn as suddenly legitimate.

“It wouldn’t be good. I can help here, I can, Christian. Wasn’t I strong along the plains?” I imagined more river crossings and rickety ferries on any return trip; I imagined a long journey back in silence with men perhaps resentful that a woman and child rode with them. I imagined a ship in a windstorm with me and my son all alone. “I could stay with the Woodards. That way I wouldn’t be a worry to you.”