Anyone who has ever kept or attempted to keep a diary knows the utter hopelessness of recording a life fully. Whether consciously or unconsciously details are left out, incidents overlooked, emotions ruled unfit for disclosure or posterity, and every word, every sentence, weighed, judged and critiqued by the most damning of judges—our … More VI. The unwritten

     “Today is Sunday,” Sadie wrote on the morning of Oct. 6, 1912. “I feel better now.” She had a free moment while waiting for the men to return from buying hay in Wamego, and as she sat there she thought of the road behind and the road ahead and judged the terrain against … More VII: A land so fair

        On the fifth morning out Sadie Vail and the others rose early in hopes of beating the rain. “I did not get to write this morning as we started too soon,” she wrote, proving what I’d suspected that she penned her thoughts at all hours of the day whenever she found … More VIII: An unaccounted presence

      Sometime after making camp on the night of October 7 a ghastly shriek erupted from the timber surrounding their wagons. The noise stopped them in their tracks as if time itself had ceased, each in his or her own singular chore, Sadie cooking supper, Lucile playing with a doll, the others cooking … More IX: Night noises and the road south

       Sucked into the city, spat out the other side and the open road before us. I’m running more on guesswork and a gossamer thread of orientation left behind by Sadie Vail on October 9 at the beginning of one of her more cryptic entries. “We came through Carbondale today,” she wrote, so … More X. The trail grows cold

     Each morning they’d rise and concoct a breakfast over a small fire and knock apart their camp in rituals and roles common to the 1800s and in the evening when the sun westered repeat the process in reverse order, footsore, sunweathered and famished, marking on a tattered map the course of their day’s … More XI. Rattlesnake Hill

      Travelers on the Santa Fe, Oregon, California and other historic trails rarely harbored delusions about the precariousness of their migratory existence. So many things could go wrong that would either strand them (broken axles, shattered wheels, overturned wagons, lame horses or mules) maim them or kill them (cholera, infection, snakebite, gunshots, fractured … More XII. Into autumn

       Sadie’s new high-collared coat came in handy as night fell. “It was so cold it was like sleeping outdoors,” she wrote the following morning, hands barely thawed above a bed of glowing coals and smoke stinging her eyes. A crystalline stratum of hoarfrost whitened the ground and every other thing living or … More XIII. A second life

        When Fred returned that night the dog was still at large on the streets of Garnett. Its absence, however, was welcomed by a local raccoon which raided the camp searching for likely acquisitions, sniffing and rooting and scratching and rustling and in everyway waking the sleepers to its intrusion until boredom … More XIV. Something lost, something found

       “It is nearly impossible to surprise ourselves,” the poet Jim Harrison wrote, but on the twelfth day of their exodus Sadie, Fred, Lucile and the others would do so repeatedly, and with such dire consequences, that it made the previous day’s foibles pale in comparison.      As if to compensate for … More XV: The days are stacked against us