Like all good children of the 80s, I grew up playing the Oregon Trail, trying to make it west with enough bullets to shoot dinner, before my oxen broke down, and without losing my load in any of the river crossings. Naturally, then, I was intrigued by the title of this book alone.
Rinker Buck's life if falling apart and so he decides that a summer on the Oregon Trail will cure him. That is, he wants to become the first person to cross the entire train in a covered wagon in over 100 years. Just like the pioneers, Buck uses the internet to find a team and wagon, and make the necessary preparations to spend four months roughing it in some of the most rural - and often remote - corners of America. Fortunately, his brother is both Mr. Fix-it and a Horse Whisperer, widely respected as one of the best team drivers in the country. (Those would be mule teams, not NASCAR teams.) So it is that the two of them set off from Missouri, bound for Oregon.
Interspersed with stories from his own journey - my favorite of these is about RVs, or more specifically their drivers, who Buck states rather unequivocally covet the opportunity to create traffic hazards and did so with alarming regularity when the wagon wasn't bumping through the wilderness - Buck constructs a solid history of the original Oregon Trail. He has clearly done his research and quotes generously from pioneer journals, guidebooks, and other original sources, as well as histories written by others. He also creates a history, of sorts, of those who reside near or work to restore the trail today. This is all very well done.
Buck also paints a wonderful portrait of the American heartland. His trip across the Oregon Trails puts him as up close and personal as possible with Flyover Country, and Buck makes a compelling case for why the this part of America still matters - and not only for the Union Pacific freights that haul our goods from coast-to-coast.
My only complaint, really, should not come as a surprise: at time Buck is a little too wrapped up in himself. It's hard to imagine that the pages he spends trying to deconstruct and reconstruct his relationship with his father are of interest to the same crowd that wants to read about the Oregon Trail. (Yes, I know, there are traditional histories available for those who want the just-the-facts-ma'am version.) He also seems just a teensy bit too smug, just a teensy bit too often. And, while his brother certainly has his own quirks and idiosyncrasies, like A.J. Jacobs's wife (The Year of Living Biblically - another crazy quest), Nick Buck just might deserve some kind of medal.
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