Auburn (Baker County), Oregon, March 24, 1863
Six months here in Freezeout Gulch
amid stick figures of rattle-bone wormwood
known as sage. Pulling blankets—
the color of fog—up under my chin,
head throbbing, a thread catches
a crack in my lip. My feet cold, but somehow
I cannot will these hands to reach down,
warm them. My gaze traces "s" patterns
in the bark of this rough-cut
log hut husband secured for us. I think
of his fingers—how I kissed each bruise—
sore from sluicing, repairing riffles. Reaching
across the bed for him, empty space. I remember
At Cedar Falls we married,
my teaching contract almost up. Cyrus:
childhood friend, ex-infantry man,
lawyer, and Episcopalian like me. Mama, Papa
did not entirely approve our plan:
trek the Far West, scratch
the gold fields securing savings, then
back to Potsdam—a gentleman's farm
amid family.
Left Iowa May 9th. Arrived October.
I walked for weeks, walked until night
—30 miles—then walked
a little longer never getting into a wagon;
no sympathy from anyone but husband
and at the end of day, cooking outdoors
for unprincipled families of twenty
who carried our goods which
in the end we lost. Here now in a place
you will not find on any map.
So prostrate I cannot hold a pen,
my health in tatters. After leaving school
at Mt. Holyoke, I wanted to teach in foreign lands
and indeed am in one, though tisn't Palestine.
Auburn: This smoke-filled damp air
the shade and density of clotted wool.
The butcher shop, like most mercantiles,
is outdoors on a split log-of-a-table-top.
I shall say no more, except
Main Street parallel to Blue Canyon Creek,
all other avenues catawampus.
This place never had an inhabitant
until last spring and now nearly 7 thousand.
Stabbings, hangings—one man dragged to death
by mob—little observance of the Sabbath,
the only conversation: treasure and what
to trade and for how much whiskey.
No windows with glass, no bedstead, not one
chair, my fire's warmth escapes into
the mud-n-stick chimney. I reach
for Cyrus across splintery boards nailed up
to sleep and eat on—then remember:
Gone forty days after bacon-potatoes-flour, back
before we're trapped by arctic ice 'til spring.
No, no, no he's come and gone again
this time to Boise's brighter goldbars.
His absence cuts my soul like cankers
cut my mouth, my throat.
I did not teach today. The pain
in my head makes my ears ring.
Blizzards rise and fall in my gut, all I can eat
is snow, which soothes the tongue but
the stomach rejects.
A knock? Is someone there? I must
get out of bed, unlatch the door. Here's
my bonnet, my tortoise shell comb.
Looking up gulch, a congregation of miners
dig in the little bone yard next to a wall
of tailings piled by Chinamen—
all those resting places unmarked
except by brown snow-broken grass.
Mama, husband—whose voice calls?
Fever has given me second sight: I see
Cyrus at middle-age in crow-black judge's robes,
standing on the steps of a turreted house;
a child runs across a lawn, presents him
the Family Album—its cover marbled in gold
and blood. Husband passes it to me as if
handing down a verdict. I search each page. Nowhere
on these parchment leaves can I find
myself, my likeness, my name,
not a whisper, not even—Cynthia—
a breath of me.
Martha Gay Masterson Eugene, Oregon Territory,
Remembers October 28, 1852
The groom arrived late, likewise the parson.
No organ, the wedding march a steady patter
of rain with a trumpet fanfare of migrating geese.
From a side door, the bridal party entered.
Father could not bear to watch—Mamie
had always been his pet.
Holding baby Pink close,
he paced the dooryard.
And I? Always had sissy with me;
no one else for a friend.
How would I live without her?
Nine brothers. Pink, age eighteen months,
was born on the trail—that frayedribbon of suffocating dust.
The first thing Mamie and I did when camped—
scamper off, always better able
to battle snakes by clinging to one another.
If we found graves, we'd read their inscriptions.
If wolves had broken in
we'd look for the ropey yellow braids
of young girls like ourselves.
At first we shunned the skulls—sun and storm
blemished, scattered everywhere. Finally
we picked one up, another, reading verses
passersby had inscribed across the brainpan.
Adding a line or two of our own, we'd place each
to attract other emigrants to our handiwork, then
move on: father, mother, twelve children,
one daughter-in-law, and our Missouri neighbor.
September, we crossed the Deschutes,
Barlow's gate, climbed the Cascades in rain-
storm footing over rocks, fallen trees—
our party so slow others pleaded to pass us by.
The tattered oxen fell, rose, fell to rise no more;
everything we could do without cast aside.
At Zigzag Creek, Mamie and I fished
with pin hooks and thread lines.
It was my idea to investigate
the old left behind stove—
six burners, a rampart of black curlicues.
As sister placed the toe of her size-four shoe
on the iron hearth, a drover came up
and spoke to her. Another joined in.
When they rode away, we heard the first man say:
"That sloe-eyed girl? I'm going to marry her."
We giggled. He hadn't asked her name.
His hair a smokestack and kin to the stove.
A year later we'd a temporary kitchen—
four posts supporting a roof; our furniture
the wagon boxes where we slept
off the ground safe from snakes.
I'd just washed up, hung all cups
and milking buckets from the makeshift eaves.
The men gone back to mowing when
a stranger with a steel wool beard rode in.
Mamie? he asked, tying his horse to a kitchen post.
The horse had whims of his own, snapped his teeth,
and seeing a scarecrow where there wasn't one,
shied, pulling down our kitchen.
Father finished our fireplace and
five-room log house just as Oregon's
equinoctial rains began. The Day rolled around.
Groomsman, preacher, neighbors filled
the whole of our new first floor.
The ceremony short,
Mamie's happiness sealed.
Afterward at the wedding supper I told
of their first meeting at the old stove, our new rafters
ringing when I said: that afternoon by the Zigzag—
we thought we'd caught no fish.
As sister left on horseback, I threw a slipper after her
for luck. The wedding march beating
against our roof brought no comfort to me.
We'd not yet planted the stone orchard
on the hill behind home. Mamie's daughters
the first to rest there; Pink would follow.
Though father often warned: life is filled
with sunshine and shadow,
none of us had really learned this yet.
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