As we drove on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, Cait reported that a ’09 West Point graduate had been killed. Shawn asked his name. The expanse of the Yakima Valley spread out in all directions in front of us; the sun shone a white light against mountains of cumulonimbus clouds expanding straight up and dropping their gray veils to the ground south and east of us.
We read Travels with Charley aloud while we drove and it was my turn when we got to the passage in which Steinbeck describes his love affair with Montana. I got through his description of Montana and his love, but struggled to read of Chief Joseph. Steinbeck mentions that he met a very old Charles Erskine Scott Wood who, “as a young lieutenant just out of military academy” was “assigned to General Miles . . . in the Chief Joseph campaign” (122). I see again the photographs of the frozen corpses of the men, women, and children killed in that winter “campaign.” Steinbeck remembers Wood’s admiration of the Nez Perces’s skill. “Real men,” he declared the warriors of the Nez Perces (122). In this memorial I remember all those who have died fighting for their way of life and the families they love.
We read Travels with Charley aloud while we drove and it was my turn when we got to the passage in which Steinbeck describes his love affair with Montana. I got through his description of Montana and his love, but struggled to read of Chief Joseph. Steinbeck mentions that he met a very old Charles Erskine Scott Wood who, “as a young lieutenant just out of military academy” was “assigned to General Miles . . . in the Chief Joseph campaign” (122). I see again the photographs of the frozen corpses of the men, women, and children killed in that winter “campaign.” Steinbeck remembers Wood’s admiration of the Nez Perces’s skill. “Real men,” he declared the warriors of the Nez Perces (122). In this memorial I remember all those who have died fighting for their way of life and the families they love.
~ Margaret Downs-Gamble
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