The Art of Manliness - #143： Crossing the Oregon Trail in the 21st Century With Rinker Buck

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well if you are

00:00:19.940 an american you know about the oregon trail learned about it in in elementary school in

00:00:25.740 middle school or you probably learned about it playing the video game of the 1980s oregon trail

00:00:31.120 right where your family always dies of dysentery well uh it was a big moment in american history

00:00:36.140 one of the largest mass migrations in human history but a lot of people don't know that much

00:00:41.100 about it well my guest today decided you know what i'm gonna cross the oregon trail in a covered

00:00:47.200 wagon so i can learn more about this part of american history his name is rinker buck he's an

00:00:52.400 author journalist and now one of the first people to cross the oregon trail in nothing but a

00:00:58.000 covered wagon in over 100 years and he did it he made it all the way to oregon along with his brother

00:01:03.240 and today on the podcast we're going to discuss his book the oregon trail a new american journey

00:01:07.420 we discuss some of the details about this very unique aspect of american history we talk about

00:01:13.380 the things that rinker had to relearn these lost skills that we've lost as a culture things like

00:01:18.300 how to handle mules how to repair a wagon he had to learn this on the fly in order to make this trip

00:01:23.560 a success and then we also talk about what he learned about being a man uh while on this over

00:01:29.560 four month journey across the oregon trail if you love history you're gonna get a kick out of this

00:01:34.120 podcast rinker is uh is a character he's really funny and he knows his history uh so without further

00:01:40.480 ado rinker buck the oregon trail rinker buck welcome to the show hey it's great to be here

00:01:54.760 all right so your book is the oregon trail a new american journey and it is part memoir part history

00:02:00.700 book and it's basically it's your travel log of you and your brother in a covered wagon pulled by mules

00:02:08.700 and you guys do the oregon trail uh first off this is great like what inspired you to do this and

00:02:15.320 why did you think that was even a possibility well um what happened was i became i've always written a

00:02:21.620 lot about history and i'm kind of i'm one of these people that uh i couldn't decide what i wanted to do

00:02:26.940 with my life be a writer or be a historian so i've kind of done both and um i happen to be out

00:02:34.000 working on a assignment as a journalist in kansas and uh i ran across the stretch of the trail

00:02:40.100 and i walked it there's a lot of original ruts left of the 2100 mile trail um about half of the

00:02:48.180 original ruts are still there and the rest is just a two-lane blacktop that you can follow very easily

00:02:53.500 and it's really still the oregon trail because it functions for those communities the same way but

00:02:58.840 at any rate i became fascinated by the trail after walking the ruts and stopping at a couple sites

00:03:04.460 and the reason was is that um i don't really like the way we teach history in this country and

00:03:10.800 you know we never explain to kids we tell them the guy george washington was but

00:03:15.340 we don't include the information that he was the richest guy in america and he had he had a lot of

00:03:21.720 motivation to uh separate from the british crown so it amazed me when i got into trail history

00:03:29.380 that so many of the myths uh and romance and fantasy from hollywood and so forth about the trail years

00:03:37.700 and about the opening of the west were just plain inaccurate so for instance women played a really

00:03:43.620 critical role in uh opening up the trail because there was a big cultural prejudice about uh women 0.99

00:03:50.040 crossing the trail it's considered dangerous and uh one particular woman their sister whitman who i write

00:03:56.080 about a lot really opened up the trail um the indians were friendly at first uh until we started

00:04:02.860 slaughtering the buffalo in such numbers that they realized the uh end was near unless they became hostile

00:04:08.500 um religion played a much greater role in driving people to the trail uh than anyone would ever tell you

00:04:15.920 in a history book because historians tend to want to gloss over the fact that america was a very

00:04:20.660 uncomfortable society a very bitter society in the 19th century there were huge religious battles over

00:04:26.300 nonsensical doctrinal points in every small town and people got sick of it and they just they just

00:04:32.640 decided i'm going to move somewhere where i got a little bit more religious elbow room and a lot of the

00:04:37.980 uh a lot of the wagon trains were actually formed by a group of baptists a group of lutherans and so forth

00:04:44.520 and it's hilarious to read the accounts because they get to a camping point oh we better go another

00:04:49.960 mile i don't want to i don't want to park for the night near those methodists you know so um and and

00:04:55.680 the uh outfitters uh were this classic american scammers they they overloaded they forced the pioneers to

00:05:02.920 overload the wagons knowing full well that the pioneers would dump it off somewhere along the way and

00:05:09.120 then they the outfitters could come along and pick it back up and bring it back to independence

00:05:14.360 or saint joe and uh resale to the next group of suckers yeah the trail fascinated excuse me i was 0.54

00:05:21.220 saying that yeah like someone like people would pack pianos yeah yeah yeah and and right they did

00:05:27.380 pack pianos and you could literally uh by the 1850s you could literally navigate all the way to

00:05:32.940 california or oregon along uh the oregon trail the first 1 000 miles of the california trail is the oregon

00:05:39.940 trail and uh just navigate your way just by the debris field and that's literally true so um

00:05:47.540 that fascinated me and i wanted to uh write a book about the real trail instead of the myth that was

00:05:54.540 passed down to us as school children and then i came across in one of my history books a uh a statement

00:06:00.700 that the last documented crossing of the trail had occurred uh in 1909 and i said to myself well

00:06:10.360 why that's a much better book if the trail hasn't been crossed in over 100 years uh why don't i just

00:06:16.460 buy a team of mules and a covered wagon and go and what happened was i had grown up on a horse farm

00:06:23.040 where my dad was a was a wagon fan here he was a horse and buggy guy and we'd actually gone on a

00:06:29.980 covered wagon trip as kids just between our farm in new jersey and pennsylvania much more modest adventure

00:06:36.080 uh but you know how childhood memories are and everything it just it just enabled me it just

00:06:41.960 empowered me to feel that i could do it and so it was pretty simple i bought a team of mules and a

00:06:46.640 old restored wagon and everything and we left with my brother who's a much better horseman than i am

00:06:53.020 and it probably stopped being simple the day we left so it simply formed the idea yeah and we'll get

00:07:00.840 into that and i'm i thought as i was reading this book i learned so much about the oregon trail and

00:07:05.160 i'll admit like i do before i read the book i really didn't know much about the oregon trail and i think

00:07:11.840 that's very common too and i think it's odd because like you say in the book it's one of the it's one of

00:07:16.240 the world's largest land migrations right that's ever happened in the history um and it shaped the

00:07:22.120 country but we don't know much about it like why does the oregon trail get overlooked in american

00:07:27.320 history oh i think what happens is um we sanitize a lot of uh history uh there's a guy named tim low

00:07:36.520 and there's a really excellent book called lies my teacher's to them and he talks about this process as

00:07:41.740 uh heroification in order to heroify someone um and pass down a version of myth that um school

00:07:53.500 school boards across the books have you have to sort of present the side of that person

00:07:59.960 uh that's acceptable uh to the american public and to the kind of people who buy textbooks so the oregon

00:08:07.360 trail i think kind of got lost out um because the curriculum is that there's so many other uh

00:08:13.600 important periods they have to deal with but also the historians really didn't want to deal with what

00:08:19.420 really happened on the trail religious squabbling huge on battles literally between the mormons and the

00:08:25.840 um non-mormon christians um a huge amount of scamming by the uh uh by the outfitters you know very 0.81

00:08:34.840 dishonest business practices like you know we'd see today or ralph nader would ran on about uh the

00:08:41.180 pioneers knew they were uh drinking bad water that was causing dysentery um and also gave them cholera

00:08:47.860 and killed them um and there was actually enough medicine around enough science around to begin to

00:08:53.660 understand why that was so but they continued to drink the bad water because it was all they had

00:08:58.040 things like that and i i think maybe the trail was just too complex too violent too difficult

00:09:03.440 uh all the things that i describe in my books you know yeah that's on what what history history book

00:09:09.800 writers want to pass on is it's something that's simple you know myth that's simple they don't want

00:09:14.700 questions at the end they want to answer everything and in fact history is a enigma sometimes they're not

00:09:20.700 answers yeah so sometimes it's much more complex and much more nuanced um so this is great so if someone

00:09:28.180 hasn't done this in over a hundred years i imagine there were skills that you had to acquire uh relearn

00:09:36.260 or revive in order to make this happen what sort of things did you have to teach yourself in order to

00:09:41.080 make this uh trip possible there were all sorts of things the art of um wagon making and the art of

00:09:48.320 driving mules has been lost i mean there's a reason it hasn't been crossed in 100 years

00:09:53.400 because nobody's been driving around in wagons for 100 years so little things like no one could

00:09:59.720 tell us even all the armish you know and people who use horses all the time no one could tell us uh

00:10:05.240 how often we'd have to reshoe the horses the mules and we actually reshoed them uh five times my

00:10:11.180 my uh reshoeing bill my blacksmith bill was uh twenty five hundred dollars when the trip ended

00:10:16.400 wow um so we just had to leave um with that uncertainty and not know and it turns out about

00:10:23.720 250 miles of continuous travel uh which which is only two or three weeks um and you better reshoe

00:10:31.040 again we had a really good wagon restore in kansas the guy did a really great job getting our wagon

00:10:36.080 together and designing or i designed and he built for me something called the trail pup which was a

00:10:41.540 two-wheel commissary cart that we towed behind the main covered wagon so that we wouldn't have to have

00:10:47.280 any motorized support we could just carry all our provisions with us and a lot of work but he had no

00:10:53.140 idea in fact in the 19th century um you know i later studied up on it but in the 19th century

00:11:00.940 they always had an old shoe or an old piece of saddle or something on their wooden brake shoes

00:11:06.740 uh so that the wooden brake shoe the oak brake shoe hitting the iron tire rim wouldn't wear through

00:11:15.140 and uh you know our wagon guy said he's and we said well we think we're going to need brake linings

00:11:20.420 at least those brakes those wooden brakes will last you all the way to oregon well they didn't last

00:11:24.680 just 100 miles so we had to find some thresher belt um the amish were absolutely convinced that we

00:11:32.080 would hook our our three meals up we've hooked up three breast with something called a jockey stick 1.00

00:11:37.580 which you you just have two horse lines and uh and then you connect the third meal just with a stick

00:11:45.400 between bits which is how the amish do it in their fields and and that was totally wrong 100% wrong

00:11:51.000 about three days after about three days on the trip as soon as we got out of sight of the amish you know 1.00

00:11:56.500 we uh we called a harness maker in uh new hampshire and said hey can you ship us three three horse lines

00:12:04.840 you know to this following address we'll be there in a week or something and it changed the trip

00:12:10.260 dramatically so things like that i mean learning that uh i mean there were stretches in wyoming where

00:12:15.700 it's 50 miles between the rivers and we had to carry all our water we would have to go 50 miles in a

00:12:21.300 single day to get to water and everyone said there's no way you can get 50 miles in a single

00:12:27.680 day you can't do it you're going to have to have motorized support and we said well we're not going

00:12:33.020 to have motorized support and you know i learned to navigate across the desert straight across the

00:12:38.340 desert using certain landmarks and hawks and where the hawks were because the hawks were always near where

00:12:43.840 the prairie dogs are and the prairie dogs are always near the river cultures things like that

00:12:48.440 and we we had several days where we did 42 50 miles because we had to get the water by the end

00:12:54.360 of the day we couldn't wake up without water in the morning to have enough water for our mules

00:12:58.300 um there were trails there's a lot of places the trails pretty well marked across the country but

00:13:03.780 they don't always mark it at an intersection so you come to a y in a road and uh the actual trail

00:13:10.160 marker is another mile or two down over the covered wagon that's that's an hour's trip and it's really

00:13:16.200 hard to turn them around to go back because the guys who marked the trail do them with pickup trucks

00:13:21.020 and atvs and that kind of thing so i had to learn to uh dead wrecking and land navigate uh it was a

00:13:26.920 mistake we should have brought a horse along so that i could ride ahead and scout trail i ended up

00:13:32.340 scouting about 700 miles of trail on foot this is something i never you know it's i i walked a third

00:13:39.100 of the trail just to figure out where we were you know and i guess the last thing i would say is uh

00:13:44.040 see the pioneers had covered wagon trains for a reason you have 50 wagons 100 wagons and you have

00:13:51.100 all that labor you got all those men you got all the kids you get to a steep place like california hill

00:13:56.300 uh or rocky ridge really dangerous places for wagon in uh went to nebraska the other's in wyoming

00:14:03.860 and uh you know the pioneers unload the wagons the kids and the young teenage girls and everything

00:14:11.800 carry all the bed stands and roll the barrels of pork and everything up the hill now you have a

00:14:17.740 light wagon you double team you put two or three teams on a single wagon and pull up a light wagon 1.00

00:14:23.380 and you've got all that labor to do it stupid rinker the dumbest jackass in the world he goes 1.00

00:14:31.920 he goes oh i'll figure that out when i get to california hill and it was really brutal getting 1.00

00:14:38.080 up those places because we didn't have a covered wagon train to help us i also figured out after we

00:14:42.940 got to the top of california hill which is above the platte river in the rules lebraska that i could

00:14:49.080 very easily have gotten about a thousand pounds off that wag uh leaving some hay behind because

00:14:54.720 there was plenty of hay up on top i could get rid of my water because you know water weighs

00:14:59.180 eight pounds a gallon you know i could have gotten rid of about seven or eight hundred pounds of water

00:15:04.520 uh left our feed behind everything because i knew there were ranches up on top of the plateau

00:15:10.440 where i would be able to replenish that stuff or i could have gone back the next day with a pickup

00:15:15.520 bar to pick up truck or something gotten all my hay and stuff but um like a jack yeah so i just

00:15:21.780 let my brother talk me into hey we can get up there and then we got we got up to the first level you

00:15:27.820 know and it's holy we're not gonna whoa no but somehow we struggled with and we made it so there

00:15:34.680 were just tons of things that you couldn't learn before you left you just had to teach yourself along

00:15:41.340 the way and the uh the theme of the journey really for us was and i talk about this in the book is

00:15:46.940 you got to learn to live with uncertainty and if the art of horsemanship and traveling by covered

00:15:53.740 wagon hasn't been done in a hundred years there's all kinds of really important things like you know

00:15:59.100 brake pads um that you got to teach yourself along the way yeah i love that theme of uncertainty because i

00:16:05.640 think it's it's something that uh us in our 21st century uh society and culture where anything we

00:16:13.280 want we can get at a push of a button literally right um we have so much certainty our lives and i feel

00:16:18.960 like uh our pioneer forebears like they really learned how to manage or live with uncertainty

00:16:24.080 yeah and many of them had moved their farms three or four times but by the time he was 21 abraham lincoln

00:16:30.520 had lived on five different farms and um and his experience was by no means unusual so people lived

00:16:39.960 with uncertainty again you know you'd stake out a claim you'd ranch it you'd do whatever you had to

00:16:45.040 and five or six years later economic conditions had changed and you know you had to do something else

00:16:50.700 so people learned to live with uncertainty and i kind of feel sorry for our culture today

00:16:55.700 especially the millennials and the young kids because the whole system has been

00:17:01.420 geared up and distorted to give them certainty you know well this is my major in college and i have to

00:17:08.320 do two internships do two student internships which is basically a form of a culture of corporate

00:17:14.860 slavery you know like unpaid internships and so they do that and then that means i can get a job at google

00:17:23.080 it's not google it'll be some other entrepreneurial startup out in silicon valley blah blah blah and

00:17:28.880 the whole life it's everything's done oh i know exactly what i'm going to be doing you know

00:17:33.580 and uh to me that's that's a terrible way to live you know go off and take some adventure where you're

00:17:40.600 not certain of the outcome you gotta you gotta figure out the outcome so our whole culture is based on

00:17:47.940 knowing the outcome predicting the outcome and uh what i learned on the covered wagon trip is

00:17:55.600 there is no outcome the outcome is the journey itself you know yeah and uh you're not certain

00:18:02.980 i mean i left i you know my agent said to me he said hey look if your wheels break halfway through

00:18:07.420 nebraska there's still probably a book here you know and and i knew that was true and i left i had

00:18:14.020 no idea whether we'd make they didn't know how we were going to cross the rivers uh all kinds of

00:18:18.260 things and uh and you know we had huge stretches of land across the private ranches turned out the

00:18:24.020 ranches were great and couldn't wait to see us and stuff like that and um it's just a new uncertainty

00:18:30.680 every day yeah and i guess what can break is that spirit yeah and i guess it makes you uh more resilient

00:18:37.360 when things don't go the way you planned right and you just bounce back all right well i can't do

00:18:42.300 anything about it we'll go to plan b now yeah yeah and sometimes there isn't a plan b you just

00:18:49.980 figure out plan b as you go along like we came to this place called dempsey ridge it was 8 300 feet

00:18:56.020 and uh a mile and a half we had to drop down to uh 6 000 feet along the bear river in idaho

00:19:02.500 it was sort of a big crossing of the rockies and uh it was hugely dangerous there's a 300 foot cliff

00:19:09.320 on the left side of this very narrow trail we had to follow it's it's miraculous that we got down

00:19:15.960 there without getting killed we could easily have been killed because nobody knew that was another

00:19:21.580 big thing of the trip nobody knows nobody can tell us we even stopped at the blm office view of land

00:19:27.620 management office um nearby before we took on dempsey ridge and and they go well you know it's our land

00:19:35.820 it's it is government land but we haven't been up there in a while and i'm not quite sure what

00:19:40.300 you're gonna find you know and um so you just learn to live with uncertainty and but the big thing for

00:19:50.260 me is go ahead and make a decision and move forward you can always reverse that decision tomorrow

00:19:55.200 every decision is is reversible and we tend to live nowadays via you've got to sit down and put

00:20:03.240 everything down on a piece of paper and do a spreadsheet on it and everything advantages

00:20:08.220 versus disadvantages so forth and you got to make the right decision well no you don't have to make

00:20:13.880 the right decision we had a ball we spent four months crossing the organ trail i made i probably

00:20:18.940 made a bad decision every day and we got there yeah and i'm sure that that's i mean i'm sure a lot

00:20:24.740 of the original uh settlers they probably wouldn't even have left if they tried to make sure micromanage

00:20:31.100 every aspect of the of their trip they just probably wouldn't even left because like it's

00:20:34.940 just too daunting i can't do that yeah yeah and and we distort that in history because we sort of

00:20:42.220 depict the pioneers oregon or bus which by the way they didn't even have that on their wagons but um

00:20:48.280 what would happen actually was amazing when you get to places like parting of the ways where the trail

00:20:55.260 would split for going to california down to nevada and utah and or going to oregon up to idaho

00:21:04.480 northwest and it was amazing how many people actually made their decision all right let's go

00:21:10.440 to california right there that morning you know they didn't leave knowing what they were doing

00:21:15.640 imagine you got your whole family on board you know and so there were about five or six different

00:21:22.180 places along the trail where people go well you know all right let's go to let's go to california

00:21:27.480 we weren't planning on that but let's do it you know um so these people that we that we worship as

00:21:36.220 our our myth creators are are kind of uh icons we give to them attributes that they didn't really have

00:21:45.820 yeah and we we sort of i mean i think in the process you take away something i think it's

00:21:51.020 actually kind of admirable or makes it more relatable because i could totally see myself

00:21:54.540 doing that like okay this is my original plan i don't want to do that anymore i'm going to go this

00:21:58.600 way uh makes it much more relatable so here's a question i have so when people talk here's kind

00:22:04.100 of the myth of the oregon trail it's not just one trail right like there's multiple oregon trails

00:22:10.440 he talked a little bit about that sure it's a collection of trails and again it's the way

00:22:16.320 history is taught they they got to simplify everything there was a single oregon jail

00:22:20.340 i guess because they they feel that kids need certainty they need to know exactly what it was

00:22:27.500 and even if it wasn't that instead of giving kids complexity so what happened was in in the buffalo

00:22:35.500 days you know the buffalo cross and the buffalo found this crossing uh on this along the sweet

00:22:41.860 water river called south pass the continental divide there and it's just this very gradual climb

00:22:47.800 up and climb down there's no big v it's not like what you traditionally think of as a pass and the

00:22:56.040 wildlife knew for millennia that that was a way to get across the rockies to find other feeding 0.97

00:23:01.520 grounds the indians followed the shoshone the sioux so forth followed the buffalo across and they

00:23:09.520 always knew about top pass and um in about 18 or two 1804 that that period when the a little later

00:23:17.020 maybe uh when the historians were uh pioneering the fur routes the uh fur trappers you and going

00:23:26.740 through the rockies they learned about it from the indians the covered wagon uh wagon masters learned 0.99

00:23:33.060 about the south the route to south pass along the platte river and the sweetwater river from the fur

00:23:38.980 trappers so there was this continuity along the way but once they got to south pass well first of all

00:23:45.340 before south pass in nebraska people were on the north side of the river the south side of the river

00:23:49.620 15 or 20 miles could separate them there were all kinds of shortcuts once they got to wyoming

00:23:55.020 then once they got through south pass which pretty much everybody took the same route between there

00:24:01.940 and the idaho line um so central wyoming to idaho the trail was 150 miles wide there was the lander

00:24:09.540 cutoff which the federal government built there was the sudlet cutoff there was the kinney cutoff there

00:24:14.260 was the salt creek cutoff and then there were the main ruts that ran down to fourth grazier in the old

00:24:19.940 rendezvous country which was the fur trapper route and then you get into um idaho and so forth and

00:24:27.140 there were tons and tons of cutoffs because if the indians were uh not very hospitable during one year

00:24:33.100 or another they might go on the south side uh of the snake river and so forth so there's 40 major cutoffs

00:24:40.140 we took a lot of we took the sublet cutoff um a flood uh at a place called willow creek blocked us from

00:24:47.700 going we couldn't cross willow creek so we had to take the seminal cutoff uh which i knew was there

00:24:54.580 but isn't really marked nowadays but i i managed to find it and the whole thing was the oregon trail

00:25:01.140 was a collection of trails it's a collection of cutoffs most of the cutoffs the seminal cutoff the

00:25:07.300 sublet cutoff the lander road were more traveled were more heavily traveled after they were placed

00:25:13.460 than the original oregon trail west themselves so i explained all of that in the book and it was

00:25:21.700 actually one of the biggest revelations for me because i thought too oh just one trail yeah no

00:25:27.460 it's it's an associated terrain it's a broad avenue to the west that the pioneers filed to new futures

00:25:34.820 in either the pacific northwest or california okay so one of the uh the main characters in the book it's

00:25:40.900 you and your brother we'll talk about your brother in a bit because he's a he's a character yeah but

00:25:44.020 the other ones that i i grew to love were the mules um right and it's funny because like you used mules

00:25:50.580 and i'm accustomed to seeing these you know picturesque pictures of uh paintings of uh covered

00:25:55.700 wagons being pulled by oxen and if you know i'm a child of the 80s i played oregon trail you use oxen in

00:26:01.620 the video game so why mules okay so oxen were uh probably uh slightly more some historians would

00:26:10.740 say maybe about a 60 percent more common uh draft animal than uh than mules horses were eliminated and 0.94

00:26:17.780 it and that's why you know all these stupid john wayne with these wagon train and all you know they 0.80

00:26:22.100 have these beautifully matched belgian or percher on horses there's no way you would use a horse uh and 0.99

00:26:28.260 i explain all that in the book because they just don't have the stamina and they've got about a

00:26:32.500 thousand extra pounds of weight that the mules don't have um the oxen were more common uh but only

00:26:39.780 by maybe a slight fraction um and the reason i didn't want to use the oxen is is you got to walk along

00:26:46.900 beside them and crack the pull whip and everything and um you know i know i know equines i don't know

00:26:53.860 i'd never traveled with mules before but i figured i could learn to drive mules but uh you know i

00:26:59.700 couldn't imagine old rinkers standing there you know harnessing yoking up sally the ox you know

00:27:08.980 and talking her into it um the other reason that mules were preferred by people who could afford them

00:27:14.420 the oxen were cheaper but mules were preferred because they're a lot faster mule travel that uh

00:27:19.220 uh uh you you spend most of the day at a pretty what they call a fast walk and that's about four

00:27:25.220 miles 4.5 miles an hour um you can do 25 30 miles a day pretty easily uh actually move at about 2.5

00:27:34.260 miles an hour and it's just very ponderous and slow they're very strong very reliable but but uh

00:27:39.780 ponderous and slow so um and there's a whole chapter in the book i probably shouldn't waste the time here but

00:27:46.820 there's a whole chapter in the book about how the mule developed and how it was really the mule

00:27:52.660 that um that made america the mule created america and it's a very unique story about how they got here

00:27:59.300 and how we were finally able to learn to breed them and so forth yeah i thought that was one of the most

00:28:03.620 interesting parts of the book because i because people keep you know being in the south people

00:28:07.620 typically think of the mule sort of like this like hick thing right yeah uh it's what right but like like

00:28:13.140 most of the mules in america right am i correct like they came from george washington's

00:28:16.660 original stock right right um after the american revolution um america was finally able to

00:28:26.580 begin importing these things called the mammoth jacks which is what you breed to a female horse 1.00

00:28:31.780 to get a big draft meal and uh we did not have as a country we did not have access to the mammoth

00:28:38.420 jacks prior to the american revolution because the two countries that controlled that breed which was 0.67

00:28:45.540 um spain and france uh wouldn't wouldn't allow the trade of those mammoth jacks wouldn't allow any to 0.97

00:28:52.020 come to the country because they were of course engaged in not only a war but a trade war with

00:28:58.180 britain and they were going to help the british colonies as soon as the revolution was over and

00:29:03.140 george washington was now a global hero for having trumped the enemies of spain and france

00:29:11.380 the um the royal stables of both countries essentially just sent us as many mammoth jacks

00:29:17.620 as we wanted and then they sent them to george washington and he's the guy that got the mule

00:29:22.580 started and they weren't a southern animal either even though they all started down there um if you go

00:29:28.820 back and look at the canal era which was this glorious wonderful era in american history up north

00:29:34.740 everywhere else we actually had more canals up north than there were anywhere else in the country

00:29:40.900 all the old pictures you see all the old mythologies all the old you know eerie canal song and stuff that

00:29:46.260 kids used to learn in school um show mules in the in the north pulling the canal boats so so mules were

00:29:52.260 everywhere yeah and like they're still used today and you mentioned in the military still has like a mule

00:29:58.900 team that they take them out to afghanistan to yeah

00:30:04.980 the military actually has um two separate locations uh for um mules at this point one in alabama

00:30:14.500 and one in uh in california and they keep up uh riding mules packing with etc because there's

00:30:20.660 you could always get a crisis unlike we had in afghanistan where you've got to get supplies in there

00:30:27.060 and uh you can't drop them in whatever and uh in fact some of our earliest attacks on the taliban

00:30:33.300 we're uh we're done uh with with the aid of mule packs so the american military still maintains them

00:30:40.340 and they've actually come back and vote they're a very fashionable animal now uh people are breeding

00:30:45.300 really fancy tennis walking mules and all this kind of stuff again i get into that in the book and it's

00:30:50.900 pretty fascinating yeah it is really i would make it made me want to get a mule

00:30:53.620 yeah yeah um so yeah and they um what was your what was your typical day like i mean were there

00:31:03.620 some days like were they all was one of those things like days just sort of bled into days or

00:31:07.140 were there was every day pretty much something like you woke up and like something could happen today

00:31:12.660 that could just completely throw this trip off i think the um i think the days were uh felicitous

00:31:20.100 blend of uh monotony and then and then uh something beautiful or very funny would happen

00:31:26.740 uh we would get up we would wake up um i slept in the covered wagon and my brother slept in a federal

00:31:33.700 on the desert floor we uh we we made 79 camps on the trip i'd say about half of them were at original

00:31:41.060 pioneer encampments places like plum creek and rock creek station and independence rock all the

00:31:47.140 places the pioneers camped uh it turns out the reasons that i explained in the book uh pretty

00:31:53.380 much to become state public parks and uh so but they're very beautiful places and oftentimes very very

00:32:02.180 remote places that the oregon trail country is still gorgeously undeveloped most of it and uh you can

00:32:10.020 wake up in the morning and see the same things that the pioneers did so we get up uh around uh 5 36 i

00:32:18.660 actually woke up earlier and i would uh make some breakfast for my brother and i feed the mules then

00:32:25.140 we'd harness it takes about half an hour 45 minutes to harness and hitch the wagon and then uh we would

00:32:31.780 often go we found it by early in the trip we found it by 5 30 or 6 in the evening

00:32:40.020 we'd done our allotted 25 miles for the day but we became kind of mile obsessed we just wanted to

00:32:45.780 make sure we were making enough progress so uh between 6 and 9 is actually a beautiful time to

00:32:52.980 travel with mules because in the evening because it's cool and so we do another 10 miles in the evening

00:33:00.260 and so that would get us into camp pretty much maybe an hour before sunset maybe sometimes at sunset

00:33:05.620 and then uh you're pretty exhausted you're tired from sitting on a wagon seat uh being in the sunlight

00:33:12.980 there in nebraska uh we'll walk through the west there's always about a 35 sometimes even a 40 mile

00:33:19.940 an hour wind on your face um which is something the pioneers battle quite a bit and uh you just tired

00:33:27.700 tired tired tired exhausted exhausted so we make up a dinner of hormel chili no beans that's basically

00:33:35.140 that's what we subsisted on for four months and then uh i i i collapsed into my bed with my boots on

00:33:43.620 literally i never did the dishes at night i was in the morning i was too exhausted um so there was a

00:33:50.740 monotony of it to that except you know once a week we stopped for a couple days give the meals a rest but

00:33:56.740 then in the middle of the day you'd come on some spectacular place like california hill or

00:34:04.580 uh description rock or we had this three-day adventure where we had to get through uh

00:34:10.580 something called the south hills of eastern wyoming where the trail isn't marked the trail

00:34:15.460 there but it's never marked yeah it's been all country and so i had to get up every morning and

00:34:21.380 climb to the top of the nearest peak and figure out what was my compass course to stay on the plat river

00:34:28.660 and that sort of stuff so it was a combination of monotony and just absolute fun thrilling stuff

00:34:35.380 you know a lot of nights we get to a ranch and people we're we're making you a steak dinner you

00:34:40.580 know get yourself all settled and come on into the house you know so combination of monotony beauty and

00:34:46.900 spark that's awesome um so your brother went along with you and originally when you were going to do

00:34:52.420 this trip you weren't planning on bringing your brother along um but he come to find out he served

00:34:58.660 it he's like an asset like he was like he made the trip possible and i love he's just really funny can

00:35:03.220 you tell us about your brother and what skills he brought to your trip to make it possible yeah well

00:35:09.540 anybody who complains anybody who complains about their family and you know filial relationships or

00:35:15.060 sibling relationships they ought to read this book because it's the kind of thing it's like

00:35:20.340 you don't you don't know what it's what it's like to have it bad so my brother and i grew up we were um

00:35:26.500 on this horse farm in new jersey we were a big family 11 kids so that and i was at the top and he was more

00:35:33.300 in the middle and what happens in families like that is big families is but different siblings have

00:35:40.660 completely different growing up experiences because the parents are at a completely different point

00:35:46.100 uh say with the older kids and with the younger kids so uh in my family nick was the guy that turned

00:35:52.900 out there's a couple others too but nick was one of the ones that turned out uh you know i went to

00:35:57.220 college and considered myself sort of a refined person and you know you come to my house and i have

00:36:02.340 antiques you go into nick's house if it's if it's an antique it's really an antique and uh he he's

00:36:09.700 basically uh sort of a defiantly you know assertively blue collar guy and uh he builds houses and fixes up

00:36:18.580 barns and stuff like that for people um but he's also extraordinarily a joy at a wagon mechanics he's

00:36:26.660 one of the few people i've ever heard of he made a living for 10 years a very good living

00:36:31.140 uh driving uh a place at a new hampshire ski resort to cart people around and then during the

00:36:39.540 summer he was a fisherman in alaska he worked in the alaska fishery so he has this brilliant

00:36:45.060 mechanical background and new driving experience and everything um but the big personality difference

00:36:51.780 between us is he just considers you know anybody who's wasted their life to the extent of getting a 0.99

00:36:57.860 college education it's just they're inherently stupid you know like he was talking to a friend 0.99

00:37:04.020 of his once i heard overheard it because he has a loud voice and his friend was saying well i don't 0.99

00:37:08.900 know i met your brother he seems like a nice guy you know it's obvious that he reads a lot of books and

00:37:15.860 nick said to him uh oh no it's much worse than that much worse he writes books you know so

00:37:23.220 so uh so uh we're basically incompatible very different people you know and a lot of the

00:37:32.180 book was about and yes it's true without him i wouldn't have been able to make it because he

00:37:36.660 could fix things you know wheels would break parts of the wagon would break the mules would run away all

00:37:41.380 this stuff and uh fix them and handle the mules and stuff a lot better than than i could but there's

00:37:48.420 a clear division of labor uh but the the point is that we had to conquer our personality differences

00:37:55.540 i had to learn to just ignore the uh the insults and the behavior and and so forth um and he had to 0.99

00:38:02.980 learn to endure you know my uh from his standpoint unimaginable stupidity that results from a college 0.95

00:38:13.380 education um and and the book is really about how two siblings who have a lot in common but 0.93

00:38:21.700 who have very different personalities conquer those differences uh to make the journey happen

00:38:27.380 yeah yeah i mean and you had to right you had no choice and i'm sure that's why uh you know that

00:38:32.820 happened with the early travelers as well the early pioneers uh it probably was a lot of personality

00:38:38.260 differences but they're like all right got to get over that because we got to make this happen

00:38:41.460 whereas today if you don't like your sibling well you can just go to another state or go to another

00:38:47.780 room if you're still living with your parents yeah it's a good point because uh it's a good point

00:38:54.020 because it's something we don't talk about with the pioneers there was a brutal calculus of personality

00:38:59.380 involved a brutal calculus of personality that made american history what if you get in your civil

00:39:04.900 war union you don't get along with the guys what if you get in on the organ trail and you don't get

00:39:11.060 along with people because so many people were randomly diversely thrown together uh it's

00:39:17.380 coping skills it's coping skills that makes you successful and uh the book the book's about that

00:39:22.580 a lot yeah so i mean what was the end of the trip like um so you you four months was it like did you

00:39:29.700 like since like feel a sense of accomplishment or i can imagine me doing something like that and i

00:39:34.420 would get you know be really excited for the ending then the ending would come and i'd be like

00:39:37.540 well that wasn't sort of anticlimactic i mean what was the the end of the trip like for you

00:39:43.220 the end of the trip was was a great feeling of accomplishment because

00:39:48.980 so many people thought i was crazy to do it and and they said you know you're gonna you don't really

00:39:53.460 know what you're doing you know um yeah you've driven wagons and all that but you just you just

00:39:59.300 know you don't know what you're doing you're not brutal and rugged enough and so forth

00:40:02.980 um and so it was a great feeling of accomplishment that we actually got a team of mules and a covered

00:40:09.780 wagon to oregon despite all the hazards we ran into we haven't talked about the times the wagon broke

00:40:15.540 and things but it was mixed with depression actually because i i wanted to live out on that

00:40:21.380 trail forever i love you know the romance of being um out in these beautiful open plains and rocky

00:40:33.540 mountains of the american west which are really quite unchanged i mean they're just the same beautiful

00:40:39.940 vistas that the pioneers saw and um sorry there's an airplane taking off here

00:40:51.620 sorry no worries people people listening to the podcast who know that i'm also a pilot will find

00:40:57.860 it enjoyable that i happen to be doing this podcast uh at the end of my favorite runway so um

00:41:05.860 so it was mixed with depression because i just didn't want this it was a very miracle beautiful

00:41:11.700 rugged um glorious adventure um so it was mixed with depression but also happiness because i found a really

00:41:20.740 great uh kind of retirement home for the mule someone wanted to take those mules over from us

00:41:25.860 um that was a very good thing that i didn't have to sell them and split up the team and then maybe the 0.85

00:41:32.100 last source of depression is and you you probably know this a little bit uh it's uh oh crap now i gotta go

00:41:40.660 home and write this book all right well i mean okay i just had one last one last question before

00:41:47.700 before we go i mean what was this is the art of manliness podcast what was did you learn anything

00:41:53.220 about being a man right uh while going on this trip or were there some was there a lot some life lesson

00:41:59.700 that you took from this trip that you you're carrying with you today

00:42:02.980 day sure uh first of all i think that um i think that my brother and i are really really rugged and

00:42:10.100 uh we we just have this ability to just go on all day and no matter how hot we are and how much sun and

00:42:18.100 wind is affecting us because we grew up on a farm and that sort of thing but i don't talk about that um

00:42:25.300 mostly it was just the combination of being with a brother with whom you sort of share a lot of values

00:42:32.580 and family legacy um made it possible to have the endurance to cross the trail but the second side

00:42:41.140 of it is is that um i think there's um i don't want to say the wrong thing and offend women but 1.00

00:42:49.140 i think there's something about the female sensibility that they are more interested in um expressing 0.82

00:42:57.780 vulnerability and and not asserting that they know they know the answer and something very important

00:43:06.820 happens to you when you do become vulnerable and you don't know the answer which which really happened

00:43:12.180 a lot on the trail i just well how the hell are we going to get across this river now it's overflowed what

00:43:17.140 am i going to do um and in the sort of back of my mind i remember well there is a cutoff in this

00:43:24.180 area that i might be able to take it fine um but what happens when you express vulnerability

00:43:31.220 and what happens when you adopt an attitude of i don't really know instead of this manly thing

00:43:39.620 is that your mind suddenly opens up to all the possibilities of other things that you could think

00:43:45.940 of or try um in other words whatever that chemical is that flows through your body the opposite

00:43:54.100 of adrenaline say that makes you open to exploring things um actually opens up the intellectual

00:44:02.180 possibilities of what you can achieve in this situation and so i learned that there was a

00:44:08.100 a very manly side uh of course just endurance not worrying about uh taking showers you know it took us

00:44:16.980 29 days to cross wyoming and we only had three showers the whole time um perseverance

00:44:23.700 being able to hold mules back when they're trying to run away at you and stuff but that was only half

00:44:28.420 of it the other half of it was not being arrogant not being masculine not being uh certain and just

00:44:37.540 allowing situations to define themselves and to have a very open inquiring mind so that's probably

00:44:47.380 i'm not saying that's a big change but it was certainly the the big personality split

00:44:54.980 that was reinforced by traveling the oregon trail fantastic well rinker your book is fantastic i'm going

00:45:00.900 to i want all my readers to go out there and get it because it's just a fun fun read and you're

00:45:04.180 going to learn a lot along the way thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure my guest

00:45:09.540 today was rinker buck he's the author of the book the oregon trail a new american journey you can find

00:45:14.340 that on amazon.com and really if you love history go pick this book up i learned a lot about american

00:45:19.300 history through this book that i didn't know about and it's just a fun fun read i mean i laughed out

00:45:24.500 loud several times while reading this book again oregon trail go check it out

00:45:30.820 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:45:35.220 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com

00:45:38.340 and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

00:46:08.340 you

00:46:09.540 you

00:46:13.540 you

The Art of Manliness - October 01, 2015

#143： Crossing the Oregon Trail in the 21st Century With Rinker Buck

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript