April 14, 1849

Dear Mother,

I write to you from a place that has no name on any map I have seen. We have been traveling for thirty-seven days since leaving Independence, Missouri, and the country has changed in ways I cannot easily describe. The trees thinned and then disappeared entirely. The grass stretches to the horizon in every direction, rippling in the wind like a green ocean. At night, the sky holds more stars than I believed existed.

Our company consists of twelve wagons and forty-one souls, including seven children. We travel fifteen miles on a good day, fewer when the rains turn the ground to mud. The oxen are patient but slow. I walk beside them most of the day, as the wagon is too crowded and too rough for sitting.

I will not pretend the journey is pleasant. The dust is relentless. Water must be rationed. Mrs. Harlan lost her youngest to fever last week, and the company stopped for half a day while we buried the child on a hillside with no marker but a ring of stones.

And yet, there is something in this landscape that I did not expect. A kind of openness that changes the way you think. In St. Louis, I worried about small things—the price of flour, the condition of the roads, whether the neighbors approved of our fence. Out here, those worries seem to belong to someone else. The land asks different questions. Can you build a fire in the wind? Can you find water before dark? Can you keep walking when your legs want to stop?

I do not know what waits for us in California. The stories we hear are wild and contradictory—fortunes made overnight, cities of tents, lawlessness, and opportunity in equal measure. I choose to believe the version that makes the sacrifice worthwhile.

Give my love to Father and the children. I carry your letters in my coat pocket, close to my chest.

Your devoted son,
William