/ Westward Ho

Whenever I look to the horizon of my future, I slowly back away, wonder if I can reverse time by spinning the earth underneath me feet like a lumberjack in a log-rolling competition, but realizing my density is only just barely matched by the entire planet, which also has age and inertia on her side, I take to playing Westward Trail, to make me understand that things are not so bad as they could be.



The lessons are harder learnt when failure means you don’t eat, and still, somehow, these early pioneers were audacious enough to bring children into the world, and then made back-ups, just in case, urged on by the apparent bounty of the land.



Sometimes, they had naught but the clothes on their back, except when they didn’t even have that, because Pa was such a poor shot when Ma left the mulberry cordial too long out in the sun. In my adult life, I have never wanted for liquor, and can hardly cry in comparison, now can I?



A thousand terrible shots is often just barely what it takes to overcome by force of numbers what wit alone cannot and could never accomplish, not when fresh meat is on the line. It reminds me that lately I must be overthinking my problems, when what’s probably all that’s needed is a mental outburst full of rage and projectiles.



In pioneer days, sometimes the first thing you lost was the one thing you needed, and love almost never fell into this category, being as how you could shoot your way to good health, whereas companionship, while it might get you comfortable from age 50 right on through to your very own pair of porch rockers, does very little in the way of acquiring the kind of sustenance that keeps you strong enough to ward off dysentery. Not back then it didn’t, and so whenever I long for physical touch, I remind myself that there are soup kitchens in nearly every major city, so I’d best just keep it all in perspective.



That is not to say we don’t share in some mutual suffering, and I know from my turns at the round how the settlers often succumbed to that most poetically justified of circumstances, when the person least likely to fail you very often does. There is a moment that both of us have thought, ‘Not you. I would have expected almost anyone in the world to let me down, but my god, not you.’ Occasionally I say this only to realize I’m in the bathroom brushing my teeth.



And then you might think that the opposite holds true, that the person you most expect will live up to his suspicion of weakness will in fact surprise you, ride in to rescue your party, against all odds, but you’d be wrong. That person will live up to his name and fail you time and time again. But at least nowadays that failure won’t result in a slow death at the hands of cholera. It’ll just set you on edge, maybe cause you to get hammered and dump sugar in his gas tank.



Of course, back then, the people who let you down often died shortly thereafter, being as how we were all so closely bound up in the web of our livelihood, tethered together in a way that really brought your mistakes close to home. And no one I know who has done me wrong has gotten so much as a stomach ulcer, and me being well past the average lifespan of the Oregon pioneer, this has me wondering if anything has really changed at all.



I suppose the storms these days are really metaphors for tempestuous relationships, what with weather prediction nearly down to a goddamned science. You no longer hear about rain and floods killing scores of unsuspecting settlers, and if you do, all you have to do is turn the channel, maybe check the weather in Phoenix.



Like then, your fate today is likely held in the hands of someone in a hurry to attend to more pressing matters than your welfare. But there is no frontier justice keeping me from shouting my opinions far and wide. I like to complain, albeit very quietly and only among others who agree with me, so this might be the most advantageous difference of them all.



I have recovered from screwing up more times than I can remember. The pioneers got far fewer do-overs. I cherish my mistakes and would like to think I’d make a poor settler.