White Bird

So here I go again, shooting a post to the barren wasteland of pages not displayed on the first page of search engine hits. Unless you are searching something really strange. Which of course nobody does...

I ride the Raleigh occasionally now. Not as much as at first, but that's how these things go, right? This morning I woke up bemoaning the fact that my days have become pretty similar of late. I wake up, prepare myself for the day. My preparation usually involves a shower and/or a few pounds of spaghetti (don't ask). Then I go to work. Sometimes I mix it up by not bringing my lunch and coming home to fix something to eat. Now my microwave is broken so I eat more at work. Cold curry isn't as good as you would think. I guess that depends on what you think though.

So when I awoke I decided spending another Saturday on the Internet watching Flight of the Conchord videos just wasn't going to do. I had to get out and do something. I had to go to White Bird.

Of course I didn't know that is where I would end up. You never know exactly where you will end up when you fire up Triple R (my Subaru) and drive towards the nearest paper mill you know of. I stopped for gas and a pastery at a little shop in Uniontown Washington. The scone was good and I drove past the Lewiston paper mill onto the Nez Perce reservation. I decided to follow the brown signs marking th Nez Perce historical trail to the small town of White Bird Idaho.

The town itself is nothing special, but what happened there before it was even a town is. There the first shots of the Nez Perce war were fired there on June 17, 1877. The war that pitted a handful of formerly peaceful braves against a US army freshly hardened by the civil war. Some argued that the lessons of Gettysburg had created the most formidable army of the age, but in White Bird Canyon a detachment of this army and around a dozen volunteers would end up scrambling through high grass for their lives.

I will spare you a description of the battle itself, but I will say that I was rooting for the Indians. They made it out without a single casualty, but with the freshly kindled anger of the US army. From that point their was no hope of victory. This was the beginning of the age of war front dispatch. The telegrams to the east documenting the US blunders simply would not do.

Then I drove home. Home in time to watch plenty of Flight of the Conchords.