western diary and college of idaho and jean

Only a few things stand out from this leg of the trip. I stopped in Rome Station, which consists of nothing more than a cafe and an RV park, about a dozen miles or so East on Oregon 95 from Burns Junction. Someone had baked some delicious-looking pies at the Station, and a few of the men sitting around and talking had, from all appearances, consumed generous portions of pies that no longer existed.

I was surprised to find that scarcest and most desirable of all things in the desert--water, just up the road a piece. The Owyhee River passes just East of the Station, wending its way through a valley until it meets up with the Snake River several miles to the north. From that moment until I left Oregon I had the feeling that I was in fertile land, even though the appearance on either side of the highway remained dry and forbidding.

A Strange Grave

And so I continued on until I saw a strange sight--a Lewis & Clark sign along the side of the road. The signs are unmistakable, with a Native guide pointing the way to a European explorer. I asked myself, 'What could there be of the Lewis & Clark expedition in the middle of this desert?' So, I screeched to a halt on the road, put the car in reverse, and headed down the gravel road 4 miles into no man's land. There were a few ramshackle homes and trailers along the road, but then I finally came to a fenced area on the right, with a gravestone and a historical marker, with plants and flowers maintained by someone. It was the grave of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau.

Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau was the son of Toussaint Charbonneau and one of his Shoshone wives, Sacajawea. The senior Charbonneau was hired as a guide by Lewis & Clark in North Dakota in the Winter of 1804-05 mostly because his wife would be able to get the Corps of Discovery through the potentially hostile Natives en route to the West. Actually, Sacajawea was not yet Charbonneau's wife when Lewis & Clark met them; they insisted that he marry her because she was pregnant. Marriage happened early in February 1805; Little Jean-Baptiste was born February 11. He became the only infant among the Corps; his multicultural and exploratory beginnings presaged an older life where he would be a multi-lingual mountain man, California mayor, and gold rusher. Other web sites give the biography of Jean-Baptiste, including his legally becoming the son of William Clark, his being brought up in St. Louis, his meeting of a German prince in 1823 which led to six years of European life where he became fluent in Spanish, French, English and German and his varied and spottily-attested life after 1829. What interested me was why he was buried right under my feet.

Well, the story goes that during 1866 there was a rumor of gold discovery in Montana. Charbonneau, who was in Auburn, CA at he time and had prospected for gold in CA earlier, eagerly jumped at the chance to go to Montana. While passing through the Eastern Oregon desert, he became sick, and stopped at what was called "Inskip's Ranche" (probably Inskeep's) near the spot on the current map which says "Danner" and there he died. His grave commemorates the life of a man of formidable talent and unparalleled experience among the interesting characters of the 19th century American West. I tried to take a picture or two of the grave, but the unremitting blaze of the summer sun and my inexperience with the camera, didn't lead to clear pictures. I felt, however, that I had touched an aspect or two of 19th century life that I fully hadn't realized before, and I sailed through the next 100 miles of my trip with this memory in my mind.

One Last Image

The rest of the trip to Boise was not particularly memorable. The view coming up from the South along highway 95, however, is quite beautiful. However, once you descend into the Valley, the Idaho towns take on a sameness, with farm implement dealers next to auto parts stores which abut KFC's or Taco Bell's. I think that one of the ugliest stretches of highway I have seen is the five or seven miles between Nampa, ID and Caldwell, ID. I drove down that stretch, however, because I wanted to explore another type of memory--this time from my own past.

For one week during the summers of 1983 and 1985 I was a teacher at the College of Idaho (in Caldwell--now called Alberston College of Idaho..I will give you one guess as to why the name was changed..) for a summer conference for the tiny Presbyteries of Eastern Oregon, Boise and Kendall. I had just begun teaching at Reed College in 1982, and so I was fresh with enthusiasm and energy as I taught classes on the Scriptures or religious history. The connection I felt at the time with the (adult) students was palpable; they were so grateful for someone who would bring them into the scholarly world of biblical studies but, at the same time, make it accessible to them, and I was grateful for their gratitude. So, I drove to the college, after experiencing the seven mile "big ugly" between Nampa and Caldwell, and walked around campus. I don't know what I was expecting; I was just trying to revisit a time and a place that held significance for me in a life that has long since disappeared.

I think the problem of memory is my most persisent joy and challenge. On the one hand I have such vivid frozen moments from the past, such times of remembered joy and connection, that it is almost too hard to put those memories aside as if they are only evanescent things, gifts that only spoil if you hold them too long. On the other hand, I know that as I walked between the Tertelling Library and Sterry Hall, as I went over to the dorm where I stayed, that such a life is gone forever. Though I retain my energy and focus, I am not the eager 32 year-old that I was then. Faith provides more ambiguities than clarities for me now. The Book of Job is now my favorite biblical book, but it was not even a glint in my mind's eye at the time.

One of the things that helped me leave College of Idaho behind was a comment made to me by a student in one of my adult education classes in Portland early in June 2005. She is a woman about 65 or 70 and told me that she was in one of my classes in Idaho more than 20 years ago. She says she doesn't remember a word I said but she loved my energy and spirit. I smiled inwardly, and knew that hearing her words were the best way to get over and cherish the memory at the same time.

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