Flight of the Kroughs

It was also rumored that Jim Bridger, aided by his friends, helped inspire among the local native tribes the belief that there existed no such creature as a white woman. Supposedly, that belief was inspired by the fact that Bridger and his friends took native women as wives, rather than dragging frail eastern women into their mountain wonderland. Therefore, the local native tribesmen reasoned that white women didn’t exist. Most enlightened people didn’t take that belief seriously.

The passage of time, however, and the need for a gimmick to draw tourists, had dignified Jim Bridger’s reputation. This, in turn, insured creditability of dozens of sites scattered throughout the valley that were dedicated to his memory that were both real and concocted.

As he rounded a long simple curve, the valley floor burst into his view.

Small towns, their names written in Glen’s memory beneath each one, lay Splashed on the tartan landscape.

As the red Ford settled with the highway onto the bottom of Virtue Valley, Glen, as never before, became aware of the fact that when becoming intimately engulfed by the landscape, it loses its patchwork definition, the view of which he had enjoyed from the foothills.

Now he could see how the acres were divided into random sized areas by Fences of barbed wire that clung to overmatched cedar posts that leaned in all manner of degree; posts and wire that had long since been defeated by tumbleweeds being chased by the relentless east canyon winds. Then visible evidence appeared around him of man’s imperfect creations that are in competition with the wishes of nature.

Shoulder deep and house wide furrows snaking through the valley floor that once carried liquid disbursements from mountain banks of snow now lay dormant--waiting only for the odd flash flood to justify their existence. Because, great man made, Corps of Engineers designed, government financed Sub-banks, known as reservoirs, now impound the precious moisture, which, In turn, is doled out through arteries of canals. Those canals feed capillaries of ditches that distributes the water throughout Virtue Valley’s rich bottom soil.

The time had come for him to turn east.

Glen continued his journey of rediscovery, his car riding smooth on the grass framed narrow road. He passed-by vaguely familiar, now remodeled or further neglected farms and homes.

Having traveled roughly one and a half miles, he automatically glanced to obliquely to his right; he had reached the place where he could see the piece of land that was once his brother Chad’s farm.

The thoughts that had passed through Glen’s mind for the past twenty minutes were merely vague mental commentaries concerning the environment that had surrounded him. Now, however, his re-discoveries were increasingly more personal. He decided to stop and have a look, if only from a distance.

The farm lacked the pre-world war appearance that Glen remembered it having in nineteen-forty-seven. He could see no rusted to decay horse drawn equipment drowning in seat-high weeds scattered about. And there were no pig-pen remnants cluttering the place. It looked as if some gigantic machine had leveled the farm fence to fence. Such must have been a considerable chore, Glen thought. Because, as he remembered it, the lay of the land had been haphazard. Some parts suddenly too high, making some parts just as suddenly too low. Some parts of the farm were too wet, and because water can’t run uphill, other parts were bone dry. Also, parts of the farm were no more than islands of useless scrub maple brush. But, as the farm was another story, Glen returned his attention to the road, resuming his journey.