I have just reread The Red Pony, by John Steinbeck, after many years. One of my favorite books, this little masterpiece bellows of a truth lost among the American people.
The last chapter, which is an add-on and does not even refer to the ponies in Jody's life, centers on the Grandfather, the father of Jody's mother.
He had been the leader of a wagon train. He had traveled west with the pioneers, and when he came to the ocean, he had to stop.
The sadness of the Grandfather morphs into pain as his son-in-law does not love him or his stories of "westering".
Now, I understand "westering". It is in my blood. Some of my ancestors went on the Oregon Trail and ended up in Oregon. Some had to stay in Iowa, and some went on.
My grandmother, on my dad's side, got smallpox and was left with an aunt in Iowa. She survived, but her entire family, bar one brother, went on to Oregon.
In those days, it took months to go west and find the pass through the Rocky Mountains. She went out in the 1930s in a car with my aunt who is a nun, and still living, in her nineties. They went out to see my great-grandparents on that side before they died. I never met them, of course.
Two women in a car following the trails of their ancestors....
Westering is either in the blood, or not in the blood.
Westering is a push to find the unknown, to discover new things no one else has ever seen or done.
Westering brings out the best in people, or the worst, and the strong survive.
Grandfather states that the men have gone soft. Steinbeck published this book in 1945. He knew the men of America had gone soft.
Something had happened.
Spiritually, when men have a goal bigger than they are, they rise to the occasion.
Westering can be spiritual, like the journey into perfection of the saints. SS. Edmund Campion and Thomas More were real men.
Their westering was interior.
When I read The Red Pony, I can feel the blood of my ancestors rising and saying to me, "Keep going. Never stop. Reach your goal."
On the road to perfection, one must have the blood of those who went west, those who had that goal, and worked hard to get it.
Westering may be a gift, that gift of never being satisfied or complacent. This gift is one which never compromises or stints when facing a problem.
I thank God for my ancestors, for those who settled in northern Iowa, in St. Louis, and those who went on to Oregon and California.
I pray they found rest when they met the ocean.
I pray they are with God, the real goal of our travels.
