Wyoming roads run dusty, each turn of the wheel puffing yellowish clouds into heavy air. There are places today, many of them, where you can follow the deep ruts made by thousands of iron-rimmed wheels, circuses of “covered wagons” carrying hopeful settlers from Eastern cities across Nebraska and Wyoming to the promised lands of Oregon and California.
I have often stopped, stood, and imagined beside those tracks. The wagons were narrow, hardly wide enough to carry the plows, shovels, and other tools the dreamers carried. There was seldom enough space for the whole family beneath the wagon’s canvas covering. Most folks walked. Flocks of small children tossing stones into prairie dog burrows or loudly complaining of thirst and exhaustion.
Day after dusty day the wagons became havens of hope. Fathers used charcoal-tipped sticks to draw designs for new plows on the canvas. Mothers imagined better ways to make blueberries into pies. Children dreamed of soft beds in safe cabins and hoped for schoolrooms in which they could learn “readin’ ’n’ ’ritin’.” Everyone prayed, urging God to guide them to safety and quickly!
In 1843 Jim Bridger, a grizzled mountain man who had lived most of his life in and around Wyoming, planted “a safe place for stopping” on a fork of Wyoming’s wild Green River. Fort Bridger, he called it, and welcomed wagon-sore travelers personally.
One of the wagons Bridger welcomed carried Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, missionaries of the gospel who were traveling to grow a church among Native American tribes 700 miles to the north. Since they arrived in late autumn, Bridger encouraged the Whitmans to stay over the winter and travel on in the spring. They agreed, spending the frozen months telling everyone in the fort about Jesus. Bridger’s heart was so touched by how the Whitmans loved and trusted God that he sent his daughter, Mary Ann, with them to the new mission in Walla Walla.
Running Late
Our young family stopped at Fort Bridger one summer as we were traveling east across the state, on our way to the Seventh-day Adventist camp meeting on the top of Wyoming’s Casper Mountain. No, we were not traveling in a cramped covered wagon, but were driving an ancient Dodge van and pulling a small travel trailer. There were five of us, Mom, Dad, and our three children—Jeremy, Julene, and Joy, ages 8, 6, and 4.
We spent too much time at Fort Bridger. Jeremy wanted to see the blacksmith shop, and Julene wanted to try on costumes in the store while Joy was admiring the horses.
Mom kept reminding me to hurry. “Remember,” she said, “you are the speaker for tonight’s meeting.”
I remembered, but when we finally left, we really needed to hurry.
We drove at full speed on the wide Interstate highway. Much of the time Jeremy was beside me, asking questions about covered wagons, Jim Bridger, the Whitmans, and how people might have prayed when they were traveling on the old Oregon Trail. “They had so many troubles,” Jeremy said, “they must have talked to God a lot!”
We made good time, all the way to Sinclair, and then north on a smaller road up toward the evening camp meeting. Often Mom Brenda reminded me that we needed to hurry.
Rather than take the safe, well-paved state highway through busy downtown Casper, I chose a narrower road that would save us miles and time. I hoped.
All went well.
Until it didn’t.
The road I chose shifted quickly from blacktop to gravel and then became a dusty wagon road that climbed the side of a very rocky cliff. Worse still, the road was made of rotten gravel that was full of rolling ruts and ridges, as if a giant cardboard box had been split apart and laid on the roadbed. “Corrugated dirt road,” the locals called it. “It gets this way because heavy trucks travel on it.”
The van was laboring to pull our trailer up and over each of the corrugated hills. Sure, the ruts and ridges were only a few inches high, but the van acted as if each one were an insurmountable mountain.
I shifted into first gear and pressed harder on the accelerator. The engine roared loudly and moved not at all.
I stopped, turned off the van, and walked up the road, hoping to discover that the rolling ruts would become a nice flat surface just around the next corner.
Instead, the road got progressively worse. I stood a long time, talking to God, apologizing for being late, asking for a miracle.
We should have started earlier. We should have left Fort Bridger sooner. We should have stayed on the main road. We needed to hurry.
The Prayer of Faith
I looked at my watch, shook my head, and walked slowly back to my family. The van’s air was charged with negativity. “We’re not going to get there, are we, Daddy?”
“No. We’re probably not going to make it until very late tonight.”
“That’s not right, Daddy.” Jeremy’s voice was strong and determined, unquestioning, positive.
“How is that?” I tried to sound encouraging, but my words trembled.
Our 8-year-old spoke with a contented smile.
“Because I prayed. I asked God to have the angels push us up the road and over the big hill. He said they would.”
I slipped into the driver’s seat and reached for the ignition key.
“Wait,” said Mom. “We need to thank God for answering Jeremy’s prayer.”
Her prayer was brief, laced with sniffles of thanksgiving.
I turned the ignition on and prayed silently. For the engine, for the transmission, for the road, and for God not to let my son’s faith fail.
I shifted into first gear, pressed the accelerator to the floor, and watched the temperature gauge slide into the red danger area.
Nothing moved.
Then, after what seemed to be an hour of hoping, I felt the wheels shift. Just a bit. Then a bit more. Then the wheels dropped down into one of the corrugated valleys and began climbing the next three-inch hill.
One corrugation at a time we climbed. No, that’s not quite correct. One corrugation at a time the angels pushed hard on the back of the trailer. We moved slowly, but we moved! Up and over and down and up and over and down and . . .
All the while Jeremy was looking out the window and smiling.
Twenty minutes later we climbed the last of the corrugated mountains. We had given the angels a good workout.
I put the transmission into park and let the engine cool down.
“The angels did it, just as I asked.” Jeremy said calmly, looking pleased. “I knew they could do it.”
Mom and I hugged our son, and then the three of us sprinted together to the back of the trailer, wondering if the angels might have left handprints in the dust; glad they had left handprints on the heart of our son.
