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Two Frontier Phrases Worth Resurrecting by Mark Hatmaker

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  Stenciled on The Old Man's Library Wall If a friendly [or merely polite sort] asked one “How’re doin’?” You might hear from gregarious hombres, “Well, I’m livin’ in the shade of the wagon.”   To declare that one is “livin’ in the shade of the wagon” is to say, “Life is all right by me, no matter which way she bucks.”   To pull this wee little phrase apart and have a look at the context reveals more than a quaint colloquialism.   Crossing “The Great American Desert” [The Great Plains] and actual deserts was no easy feat. The Oregon Trail, the Bozeman, the Santé Fe, the Applegate, the Gila, the Upper and Lower Roads of Texas, and all the other lesser known routes for the adventurous, determined or downright foolish and unprepared to cross were rife with dangers. All of these early trails were riddled with the graves of the hopeful and the discarded belongings of people who continually lightened their loads jettisoning what they thought they “couldn’t li...
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Walking the Road to Freedom by Mark Hatmaker

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  The What of This Walk Pulitzer Prize and Presidential Medal of Freedom winning historian/author, Will Durant was once asked to deliver a “Best of” list, a compendium of volumes to consume for a well-rounded education; he labeled this list “The Road to Freedom.” His implication in labeling it that being, that an encompassing view from the mountaintop of all that can be surveyed brings greater understanding and more comforting salve than narrow vistas, no matter how far-seeing and penetrating these singular studies may be. He proclaimed that becoming a broad generalist confers more gains than those accrued from more focused and exclusive reading. In essence, the geometer knows more of geometry by reading all of Euclid to the exclusion of all else than the generalist ever will. And… The theologian knows more of the recondite arguments of theodicy than a geometer ever will. And… The “self-helper” knows more of “Winning Friends” [as if friendship were a battle], and “i...
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