Fading Into Time

Day 122: This old buckboard stands outside a tiny little museum in one of Eatonville's parks. Each time I walk by it, I think of the pioneers who rode in such uncomfortable conveyances. They were a tough breed, those folk who came out west in the mid 1800s to settle in Washington's untamed land. I would think that the calluses on their behinds were no less thick than those on their hands for the days spent jouncing and bouncing on a hard wooden seat as wheels banged through ruts and over rocks. My own great-grandmother rode in a vehicle such as this, a ceramic cat cradled in her lap on its silken cushion. Remarkably, both cat and grandma survived intact. I look at this buckboard, and I marvel at how that came to be.