Time Machine Fourteen

When Is the Middle of Nowhere?

I thought of trying a modification to the old time machine.  It has worked really well taking us to many different places this year at different times in the last seventy years.  The time machine has been working on the concept of worm hole and Einstein's concept of time dilation.  Einstein was responsible for these and other advances in science because he utilized a concept of "thought experiments."  I know it is dangerous but I have been thinking lately too. I have been thinking of interdimensionality.  There are physicists now who feel the electrons move to other dimensions.  My thought experiment involves the idea of moving first into an alternative dimension and then slipping back into our dimension and an earlier time.  Michio Kaku once said of multiple universes that any decision you make splits off on a new timeline in an alternative Universe.  I decided that my decision for my new time line is for a timeline that is at a different period of a similar history.  Complicated I know.
   For my first try doing this I am hoping to take you all to the middle of nowhere.  This spot has been the middle of nowhere since the 1800's.

Next stop the Williamette River Valley

In our history, we had Trail Blazers like Lewis and Clark.  People who ventured in to the unknown to collect information of our American West.  Then following them were Pathfinders who sought to find better routes. In 1812, Robert Stuart and other companions found a South Pass, an easier route to Oregon, Utah, and California.  After that came the Pioneers, these people packed everything they owned into a wagon and headed out on those trails to put down roots in a new land, to manually sieze the wildernees and make it a home.  In 1843, South Pass was widely publizied in the Eastern United States.  This started an emmigration to the land in Oregon.  In 1846, a treaty gave the Oregon to the US and more people started every spring for their new homes.  In 1848, GOLD was discovered in California and the South Pass got heavy use.  It was 2000 miles from Missouri to Oregon.  There were many landmarks, Chiminey Rock, Indepedence Rock, Register Cliff, and Fort Laramie.

The real mark was how they changed their lives.

Whose feet trod this path?

So many pioneers and their families traveled this route that their wagon's wheel mark still scar the landscape.  They would travel from dawn to dusk.  For the women it was before dawn to prepare meals to after sunset to cook again.  Wagons were for transporting good and many of the emmigrants walked the 2000 miles. Today, we see graffiti and tagging, writing ones name, on everything.  Looking back humans have always expresssed themselves in some manner.  I'm sure that some ancient elder didn't yell, "Quit drawing those pictures on the cave wall."  Cave drawing like those in Lascux, France are revered historic sites.  Every continent had red ochre paintings like the impression of hands made by the Aboriginies in Australia.  In the America's native peoples made petroglyphs.  So it isn't surprising that when the emmigrants reached the soft sand cliffs three months into their six month journey they too might want to leave a record of their being there.

Add 160 years and it's not graffiti.

The medium is the message.

Who could resist adding your mark.

Register Cliff is one of these sites.  Travelers left their mark on the cliffs.  Names from the past have become an eyewitess to the historic journey of these people.

After so many months, you don't know your future. 

This was not an antiestablishment act.

Finding a space for you.

They were proud of where they came from.

Some traveled the route to deliver the U.S. Mail

These were actual people who lived before us.  Courageous souls who were determined to change their lives.  Some of these people may have descendants who still live in the West.
Now, we need to slip back through the bubble membrane from this dimension in the past to our own.  Seeing the mark that these people made on their time make me realize this is the mark I'm making on my time.  No matter how we travel to look at the past, the reward is the memory of it.  Come travel back with me again. See you soon.