Alone on the Oregon Trail Read Online Free PDF

so, but because I just felt like I could not take anymore and I wanted to desert the whole idea, the whole reality of it all. I would catch myself further away from our camp each time and one day I finally realized how serious this could have been, and I found my way back to camp.
    It wasn’t long after the last time I had caught myself running, that my husband looked into my eyes and whispered “autumn is just around the corner, do you see it Brooklyn, I see it; and it has a golden glow waiting for you,” and then he closed his tender eyes and his breath became shallow.
    I watched my husband’s last breath escape his precious lips and then I laid my head upon his still warm shoulder and wept way into the night. The stillness of his now resting body wrapped me with a memory that I would carry for the rest of my life, and often I think of that last day and I can still smell the autumn rains the way in which Nathaniel used to describe them.
    For a young man to never have experienced a true autumn rain in the prairies, he sure had found his way through his senses. For my husband, he found the autumn rain he was looking for in the last moments of his life and I believe now that God gave this gift to Nathaniel before he died, for I have never heard anyone describe it quite like he did.
    The horrible had happened and my greatest fear that had trapped me into an encampment of self-destruction.
    He was gone.
    My most precious husband had left me behind to carry on without our new and fresh love we had found and there was nothing I could do about it. I knew that for the rest of the world, life would go on, while I would be expected to succumb unto a life of nothingness, a shell of a human being; and it sickened me.
    It angered me to the bare bones of my soul. I heard my soul cry out unto a God that I had forgotten. To me, this God was not merciful, and I soon began to think of Him no more.
    I was left alone in the middle of a wild country I knew nothing about and my teeth would grind against each other day after day. My stress had become so intense that my throat would throb with wrenching agonizing pains. A person who has been under stress for such a prolonged time in their life knows of this pain in their throat. I would grab at it with hands of claws, and my head would itch so intensely that I would scratch it with my fingernails or whatever I could find until blood would pour from under my long blonde hair.
    The smell of death stayed upon me, as my hair was stench filled with a smell I detested. It was as if my hair had been on fire and had all died away. I would try to wash it daily and that was not good enough. I would find all kinds of flowers and soak them in fresh water, trying desperately to find an aroma to wash into my hair.
    I would lie at night and my hair would wrap its smell around my nostrils and the smell would remind me again of Nathaniel’s passing. I had tried everything except cutting off my hair and about the time I was about to cut it completely off, something came over me and stopped me from doing that.
    The memory of Nathaniel’s love for my hair would not allow me to cut it and throw it into the fire where I felt it belonged. I could not go against my husband’s wishes, knowing how he would not approve. So, I laid the knife down and burst into tears.
    For now, I would have to tolerate this horrible stench and deal with the intense itching of my scalp. I felt I had already disappointed Nathaniel enough in my failures to pull the load. Cutting my hair off would have to wait, until I at least had lost my mind completely and I knew I was not there yet.
    After Nathaniel had died, I found some inner strength to dig a grave for him to be buried respectfully and as I lifted and dragged my husband tenderly to the grave, I kissed him and sat with him for an hour or so, speaking words I wish I would have said long ago.
    Then I lowered him into the hole and very slowly covered him with a linen cloth. I then was