I zipped through Tehachapi Thursday evening on a short trip to Arizona and it triggered a vivid memory of this same place on Dec. 29, 2010 that I had with my late wife Karen.
It was our last trip to Arizona because our world came to a grinding halt when Karen as diagnosed with leukemia 10 months later. The disease eventually took her life in July 2013.
Now with Sarah by my side, I traveled through the same space Tehachapi uneventfully but my mind was replaying what happened that snowy night 14 years ago.
Until that night I had managed to live in California without ever having been in the unfortunate situation of my schedule being delayed by snow. You see, as a flatlander I generally have no reason to tempt fate by heading over the craggy peaks and ridges that flank the east side of our Valley. That Wednesday evening in 2010 changed all that.
The tragedy of the Donner Party may seem like some remote California experience buried deep in history books; that is until you actually get to experience, in some small way, being trapped in a snow storm as they had been 177 years ago.
Everyone knows the story. Some even joke about what happened to the Donners and Reeds near Truckee Lake in a sick and calloused way. But their fate was far from my mind on that drive to Kingman, Ariz. I was, after all, trekking through Southern California, famous for its great weather. Skies were clear and the sun was fading as we proceeded with plans to escape the Valley through the Tehachapi Pass. We were zipping along dry but bone chilling Bakersfield freeways in an attempt to beat an impending storm over the rocky Sierra wall and reach a motel in Mojave on the arid cusp of the desert.
But like the Donners, my plans were rudely interrupted – mine actually destroyed in a short span of about 15 minutes.
Rain turned to snow the higher we climbed. Sporadic flakes that were amusing at first turned into flurries that seemed far less cute. Our 75 mph Pontiac missile had become a pathetically slow baby carriage crawling amidst a sky of falling white and brake light red.
The snow was flying in sideways!
Perhaps my overconfidence – maybe stupidity – kept me pushing ahead. I steered my tires in the ever-deepening channels of slush at 25 mph. The snow wasn’t letting up, and slush was giving way to ice. I was losing traction as a snowstorm had its fingers wrapped around our necks.
The Donner party plight seemed a bit less ancient with the sight of a pickup which had spun out in the wrong direction.
Like me, the Donners thought they had it all figured out. Their wagon train departed Independence, Mo., in May 1846 on what they thought would be a four- to six-month trip to exciting opportunities in California. But they made a grave error in following the unproven Hastings Cutoff around the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. They were told it would cut travel time. Everyone knew you had to be over the Sierras by early October. The route, however, added a fateful month through the desert. That placed them in the unforgiving Sierras at the beginning of one of the worst snow storms in California history.
You probably know the rest of the horrible story; they were buried in early November snows and many starved to death leaving the survivors with a difficult choice: eat the flesh of their dead friends or die.
Rescue attempts failed and tragically some didn’t get to leave camp until March. It was five long and miserable months of snowbound hell. Of the 87 members of the Donner Party, only 48 survived to reach the Sacramento area of our Valley.
On Dec. 29, 2010 I began kicking myself for not heeding the weather forecasts which place us and snow arriving at the 4,000-foot ridge at the same time. The problem with so much information at our fingertips is the responsibility of doing something with it. The Donner Party certainly had no weather website to consult, no inkling of the disaster that awaited them in California, which just happened to experience the worst winter in centuries.
I feel some guilt for drawing a comparison with my experience and the Donner-Reed Party. My wife and I were lucky. By divine guidance, flashing lights of a CHP car in front of us steered off Highway 58 like a beacon. I followed it but did a bit of sliding in the process. Through the blizzard we saw the lights of La Quinta Inn as if some God planted sanctuary.
The last-minute seeking of refuge likely cost me double what I planned to spend on lodging in Mohave – and a half hour stand in line to check in – but I was happy that I had a warm room for the night. Imagine being stuck months in a makeshift cabin entombed by snow and having to feed your children pieces of boiled leather saddles, rugs and blankets just to stay alive.
My gratitude was short-lived. The next morning I was a bit miffed to see the snowbound crowd had gobbled up all the apples and bananas and muffins in the complimentary breakfast room. I was equally appalled to hear one guest berate the manager in her in-the-face manner about the shortage of muffins. I was able to scrape up a bowl of cereal for which I’m sure Mr. Donner would have given his eye teeth.
Another woman unleashed her own frosty blast of criticism at the hotel manager because her car was couched in a snow blanket in his parking lot – and she wasn’t even a paid guest. He allowed her to stay in the warm lobby overnight and what he was supposed to do about a storm is beyond me.
I offered to assist one gentleman whose car and trailer were trapped in a berm of snow, but for lack of another shovel my offer was met with a thanks.
The sun liberated us as it melted the ice from Highway 58. On the way I saw probably 30 vehicles buried in snow where they had slid off the night before, captivating the occupants in a veritable icebox. That could have been us had I not pulled off the highway the night before. I like to think the Lord was looking out for us on that one.
Thursday morning we were able to navigate over patches of ice and snow to escape to Arizona. With heater keeping us toasty, we zipped through the Mohave Desert through Boron, Barstow and Ludlow, areas that spelled doom for many a traveler during extreme temperatures a century ago.
I escaped with a growing appreciation for what the pioneers endured in extreme summers and winters.
I’m ashamed. Far too many of us fail to know how good we have it. I often chew on that thought whenever I sit in a dentist chair where I have relatively pain free work done on my teeth – sometimes while watching a movie. Do we need to be reminded that dentistry was hell for a patient in the 1800s and that people died for lack of dental care when they didn’t find it?
I’m afraid that modern luxuries – whether smooth highways cut through the Sierra or food on demand in the grocery store – have made us all a bunch of sniveling urban wimps who complain when we have to wait longer than three minutes for a Whopper at a Burger King drive-thru. We will never be half as hardy or possess half the character of those who had to shoot and skin their own game or clear a field of trees before they could plant corn, or nurse a sick child burning up with fever on the prairie without so much as a trauma center in the largest close town.
We may be minus such adversities, but wow, we are liberal with our complaints and short on our appreciation to God. That saddens me but saddens me more knowing most people don’t know any different.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
