it's a big river sometimes

On this date in 1879, the Ingallses traveled from the Big Sioux railroad camp to settle at the Silver Lake camp in Kingsbury County.

From By the Shores of Silver Lake (Chapter 7, "The West Begins"):

The sun shone brightly on the uncovered wagon, but the wind was cool and riding was pleasant. Here and there, men were working in their fields, and now and then a team and wagon passed.

Soon the road curved downward through rolling land and Pa said, "The Big Sioux River's ahead.

Laura began to see out loud for Mary. "The road's going down a low bank to the river, but there aren't any trees. There's just the big sky and grassy land, and the little, low creek. It's a big river sometimes, but now it's dried up till it's no bigger than Plum Creek. It trickles along from pool to pool, by dry gravel stretches and crooked dry mud flats. Now the horses are stopping to drink."

"Drink hearty," Pa said to the horses. "There's no more water for thirty miles."

Why did Pa try to make it in one day, if he really did? Wilder wrote that there were still "ten miles to go" at sundown. It's about forty miles between Brookings and De Smet today, following Highway 14, which roughly parallels the railroad. The Big Sioux camp was a couple of miles west of Brookings. At any rate, that's a loooong way to travel in one day, with six people on board, even with no load. In the manuscript for By the Shores of Silver Lake, Wilder wrote that a teamster had gone on to camp with their belongings. After running into the scary man on horseback, you wonder if Pa wishes they had all left at the same time...

Some of my favorite lines, again from Chapter 7:

The sun sank. A ball of pulsing, liquid light, it sank in clouds of crimson and silver. Cold purple shadows rose in the east, crept slowly across the prairie, then rose in heights on heights of darkness from which the stars swung low and bright.

The wind, which all day long had blown strongly, dropped low with the sun and went whispering among the tall grasses. The earth seemed to lie breathing softly under the summer night.

Pa drove on and on beneath the low stars. The horses' feet went softly thump-thumping on the grassy ground. Far, far ahead a few tiny lights pricked through the dark. They were the lights of Silver Lake Camp.

"Don;t need to see the trail for these next eight miles," Pa told Ma. "All a man's got to do is keep driving toward the lights. There's nothing between us and camp but smooth prairie and air."
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:48 AM