I found the experience of finding the spring (in the last post) so satisfying that I should try to explain it. Long-suffering readers know that I like to bring in a historical perspective when camping and traveling. But is that completely correct?
A proper historian uses documents and occasional inscriptions in stone as their inputs. They can also team up with an archeologist. These are severe limitations obviously. Even if there are lots of documents about a certain topic, most documents are official and therefore biased, legal, or commercial, so they are full of people's names, dates, facts, and figures. That is fine, as far as it goes.
But what was it like to experience the historical event for people directly involved? What were they thinking and feeling? For some reason, I made a real effort to imagine what it was like to find a spring or find water when digging a well for early settlers in the 1800s.
What visual clues were they looking for? Did they walk creeks upstream to see where they started? What time of the year was best? Did they watch wildlife or just ask mountain men or Native Americans? How could they be sure of the water quality, without risk? Did they bring kids along? Horses? How did their wife react when she heard the good news? What if the news leaked out and a neighbor grabbed control of the spring? Did bad news or good news bring on an especially religious attitude?
In other words, I accidentally looked at it the way a historical novelist would, rather than an academic historian. There may be many opportunities for this approach for a serious traveler.
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I hadn't really thought about this topic for years. I actually remember the first place and moment these thoughts happened. I was at a museum on the Oregon Trail. It was a fine museum. Lots of money and effort had been spent. But was mere visual info-tainment really going to help the museum visitor experience the Trail in an authentic way?
Perhaps they should have put the parking lot further from the building and made visitors suffer a little bit to get to the museum.
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| Authentic western (non-tourist) scenery in central Idaho. |
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