Pilgrim's Progress

Johnny cakes on a wood-fired griddle.

After landing at Plymouth in 1620 and surviving that first terrible winter, the Pilgrims set about repaying their debts.  While the voyage to the New World was undertaken to escape religious persecution, it was an expensive venture and required backing.  The congregation obtained funding from the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London, a for-profit group of overseas trading merchants. They fully expected a return on their investment.

Due to the hardships of the colony’s early years and some mismanagement, the rate of repayment was slow and the Merchant Adventurers pressed for redoubled efforts.  By 1625, the Pilgrims concluded that the fur trade would offer the most viable means to retire their debt.  They were able to obtain a charter from the King granting them rights on the Kennebec River in what is today the state of Maine.

So the Pilgrims built a shallop, a sailing vessel designed for coastal navigation, and set out for Merrymeeting Bay, 200 miles to the north, then up into the Kennebec River.  Twenty five miles upriver, at the head of the tide where current and tides mark the extreme of navigable water, they established a trading post at Cushnoc, the site of modern-day Augusta.

The indigenous tribe, the Abenaki, were anxious to trade.  They had abundant furs to offer in exchange for corn, of which the Pilgrims were producing a surplus, and other goods. As Governor Bradford put it, “not only with corn, but also with such other commodities as the fishermen had traded with them, as coats, shirts, rugs and blankets, biscuit, pease [sic], prunes, etc.”  In exchange for a shallop-load of corn sailed up the river, 700 pounds of beaver pelts came back down.  With beaver fur in great demand in London, the Pilgrims were able to satisfy their debts by 1636.

What industry, skill, and self-reliance.  Within several years of carving the Plymouth colony out of the wilderness, the Pilgrims were producing a surplus of corn in large quantities.  They downed timber, hewed planks, and built a sturdy coastal sailing vessel without power tools.  They sailed over 200 miles and established a mutually beneficial trading relationship with the Abenakis. They paid off their debts.

Today in Augusta, at the site of the Cushnoc trading post on the banks of the Kennebec, stands Old Fort Western.  The fort was built in 1754 to provide security and encourage settlement of the area.  It has been restored and operates as a living museum, with docents dressed in period clothing demonstrating daily activities such as cooking, gardening, soap making, quilting, and blacksmithy. 

One spunky, 80 year-old docent, dressed in a heavy ankle-length woolen dress, showed us how to make Johnny cakes on a wood fired griddle.  She explained that early cooks toasted bread over the coals using tongs, and how pleased they were to get the new-fangled toaster which held two slices of bread upright, facing the coals to be toasted.  And how the whole contraption could be flipped around to toast the other side… modern miracles!

She told us of a bright, inquisitive 8 year-old who she asked to participate by placing bread into the toaster.  He indicated that he didn’t know how.  “Just like your toaster at home,” she explained.  “I’m not allowed to touch the toaster at home,” he replied, embarrassed.  “It’s electric,” his mother clarified.

Our docent contrasted this to another young man who she asked to hang a pot of water from a hook over the coals.  He did so, handily, and she didn’t notice till later that he had a withered arm.  He had compensated with no fuss by using his forearm.

“Just which of these boys is truly handicapped?” she mused.

I think we know what the Pilgrims would say.

Rocky Mountain High

Mountains shrouded in snow storm - Steamboat Springs.

It is 2,062 miles from Block Island to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, via Interstate 80, the most direct route.  Google Maps warns that the route includes a ferry boat and tolls, apparently not an obstacle to some local folks who found themselves drawn to the high mountains in northwestern Colorado. Mike Doyle and Courtney Parks, friends, worked together at The Oar on Block Island, overlooking the Great Salt Pond (can you say wonderful fish tacos?).

When Mike succumbed to the draw of the western mountains, he convinced Courtney to join him.  They are coworkers again at La Montana, a creative Southwestern cuisine restaurant in Steamboat where we happened to meet them. Mike’s 10 year old son is learning to ski the steep, deep, fresh powder at Steamboat.  And Courtney’s goal is to keep up with the youngster.   Courtney is a 2006 graduate of Attleboro High School.  Mike is a native of nearby Warwick, RI.

Later that night, stopping at a local grocery to purchase a bottle of wine, the clerk insisted on identification in spite of my obvious seniority.  The young man, peering at my license, excitedly exclaimed “I was born in Attleboro!”  He had attended Colorado Mountain College five years ago and decided to stay.

The next night, having dinner at another wonderful restaurant (the Truffle Pig), our server turned out to be a Newton, MA, native, the home town of our dining companions. Stephanie had attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, then drifted west to Steamboat, and it stuck.  The skiing, perhaps?

What’s with all of these local folks headed west?  It’s as if Horace Greeley’s exhortation, “Go west, young man,” were still in effect.

Steamboat Springs is situated in the Yampa River Valley, some 150 miles northwest of Denver at an altitude of nearly 7,000 feet.  Because the continental divide is a few miles to the east, the snow melt drains into the Yampa, then the Colorado, then to the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean.  Steamboat is truly in the old west.

Early French trappers entering the Yampa Valley heard a loud chugging sound.  “Steamboat!” they exclaimed.  But no, it was the result of hot springs fed by Hahn’s Peak, a young, dormant volcano 30 miles to the north. Hot water was filling a small underground chamber and loudly chuffing as it was expelled.  But the name stuck and Steamboat Springs it became.  The hot springs remain a destination for seekers of hot, mineral, healthy soaks and general communication with nature. 

The Ute Indians had long used the Yampa Valley as a summer hunting ground, harvesting deer and elk and preparing for the always coming winter.  Initially their relationship with the settlers was good until they ran afoul of the Federal government’s directive to convert them from nomads to farmers and to be resettled on a reservation in eastern Utah.  The Meeker Massacre was the unfortunate outcome, deserving its own story on the atrocious treatment of America’s native peoples.

Agriculture was an early success story in the Yampa River Valley. Once the railroad connected Steamboat Springs to Denver, strawberries, potatoes, lettuce, and dairy products were transported daily.  The eventual  agricultural colossus of California made the economics of farming in Steamboat unprofitable.  So the locals turned to ranching, raising cattle and horses.  We experienced that one chilly winter evening at the Bar Lazy L Ranch, who treated us to a long sleigh ride pulled by huge Percheron horses followed by a cowboy dinner of steak, chicken, and trout in a cozy, wood fire-heated barn.

The Percherons, originally bred in France to carry knights in armor, are a hardy lot, spending the entire winter outside .  Even at -60F degrees, they remain outside.  On a mild winter day, they might consume 25 pounds of hay.  On the coldest day, perhaps 45 pounds.  The Bar Lazy L puts up 90 tons of hay to see their 30 horses though the winter each year.  Ranching is a dicey game.  One wag was heard to say “If I won a million dollars, I reckon I’d keep on ranching till it was all gone.”

So why have all these easterners wandered from Massachusetts and Rhode Island to Steamboat and found it sticky?  A wonderful ski resort with plentiful powder and peaks soaring well over 10,500 feet must be part of the answer.

But perhaps Greeley’s full quotation, "Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles,"  is even more true today than in the 1800s.