Rinker Buck Quotes & Sayings

It was an epochal moment for western migration, and few Americans who read about the women summiting South Pass failed to grasp the symbolism of their timing. It was July 4, 1836. The first white women had crossed the Rockies on Independence Day. — Rinker Buck

The pioneers and their new Indian partners amply displayed the American penchant for technological prowess, developing shore-to-shore windlasses and flatboat ferries to cross the rivers, innovations as vital to the country's progress as the steam engine and the telegraph. America's default toward massive waste and environmental havoc was also, and hilariously, perfected along the trail. Scammed by the merchants of Independence and St. Joe into overloading their wagons, the pioneers jettisoned thousands of tons of excess gear, food, and even pianos along the ruts, turning vast riverfront regions of the West into America's first and largest Superfund sites. On issue after issue - disease, religious strife, the fierce competition for water - the trail served as an incubator for conflicts that would continue to reverberate through American culture until our own day. — Rinker Buck

families, revealing insights that cannot be found in published histories. Brown doggedly cross-checks information about each grave in emigrant journals, land records, and nineteenth-century newspapers. A lifetime of searching for graves along the Oregon and California trails has also allowed him — Rinker Buck

Few academics and high school history teachers want to risk their careers by suggesting to their students that the father of their country worked the same day job as Donald Trump. Washington was a land developer, often described as the richest of his generation. — Rinker Buck

Seeing America slowly was, in a way, like eating slow food-I wasn't covering much ground in a single day, but I was digesting a lot more. — Rinker Buck

All I am saying is that sometimes you're doing quite a lot by not doing anything. You're not quitting. You just keep going. That's the pioneer spirit. — Rinker Buck

Historians have long been squeamish about acknowledging that General Washington, like many of the American founders, was a voracious land speculator. Few academics and high school history teachers want to risk their careers by suggesting to their students that the father of their country worked the same day job as Donald Trump. — Rinker Buck

Crazyass passion is the staple of life and persistence its nourishing force. Without them, you cannot cross the trail. — Rinker Buck

Americans were folks who loved to profess peace-loving values, but who fought about everything. — Rinker Buck

Even more beautiful than the land that we passed, or the months spent camping on the plains, was learning to live with uncertainty. — Rinker Buck

Fear was just a deceptive veil obscuring the unknown. — Rinker Buck

Frequently, to be an American then was to be periodically unmoored, transient, so bereft of options that moving on was the only choice. — Rinker Buck

Riding across Nebraska in a covered wagon was a monthlong immersion therapy in kindness, a reminder of the essential decency of my country. — Rinker Buck

I was having a great time, enjoying the best summer of my life, fucked up. Fucked up is good. — Rinker Buck

History almost everywhere is tragic and ironic, but in America the contrasts are more stark because we set such high ideals. — Rinker Buck

All the heroes had crew cuts, platinum-blond wives and drove Corvettes. The media was devoted to this cult of innocence. — Rinker Buck

I do not believe in organized religion, herbal remedies, yoga, Reiki, kabbalah, deep massage, slow food, or chicken soup for the soul. The nostrums of Deepak Chopra and Barbara De Angelis cannot rescue people like me. I believe in crazyass passion. — Rinker Buck

And why did I think that the notorious and often fatal obstacles that the pioneers faced - mountain passes strewn with lava rock, hellacious winds and dust storms, rattlesnakes, and descents so steep that the wagons could only be lowered by ropes - would miraculously vanish from the trail for me? — Rinker Buck

spring. The enormous economic impact of the mule trade and how Oregon Trail traffic stimulated the American economy have been frequently ignored by historians, mostly because it is a lot more prestigious for professional academics to sound learned about Senator Thomas Hart Benton or the Missouri Compromise than to actually know something about America's basic means of transportation for a century - wagons and mules. Yes, — Rinker Buck