Adventures with a Sentence

That First Step (or How Not to Write a Sentence)

By Paul Nichols

I was thinking and wondering some redundant thoughts one early afternoon just after lunch about what it must have been like to first step out toward the west; that is, if someone lived in, say, Virginia, and decided to “go west, young man, go west,” what it must have felt like to actually take that first brave step toward the Pacific Ocean (if it was really out there) after spending several weeks, nay, months, preparing, packing, borrowing, buying, bidding fare wells and receiving fare thee wells, and laying awake each night anticipating the journey westward across the Appalachian Mountains and wondering what lay beyond them after crossing them, only to have that anticipation replaced with fear: fear of the unknown—disease, distance, deprivation, despair—fear of the known—Indians, roaring rivers, outlaws, so that sleep never really came, but only weary eyelids that convinced the man (and especially his bride) into thinking he was slumbering, when in reality he was wide awake, mentally crossing the great American continent, committing himself to the monumental task of placing one foot in front of the other for a year—yea, maybe two years—to force himself onward toward the distant sea he longed so much to see and committing himself to forging a new family without roots, while at the same time forgetting the roots and family that lovingly installed him in Virginia with promises of a brave new opportunity to explore, and still knowing he mustn’t forget them nor abandon them—either family: his old and weary ancestors; his new and energetic progeny—for abandonment surely would undercut his dedication to the integrity of his mission, which was to superimpose his solitary will (and his bride’s) over the great forces of nature and earth and time and distance unlike anything ever before undertaken: one man (and his bride) stoically maneuvering across the mountains and the prairies and the desert and still more, but greater, mountains until the sea should stop him, even though knowing he was not the first, he knew he was the first of himself and that terrifying thought would rumble up from his innermost being to challenge the lazy demons who would taunt and tease and tempt him to forego such a mad endeavor; all the while the same terrifying thought urged and prompted and cajoled him to accomplish this unaccomplishable feat (with his bride) so that all of history would record that his one brave step led to the solidification of masses of land that entwined themselves into one great union of diverse races and cultures; of great men who threw down the heavy chains of their oppressors to rise up and take their own brave steps; of great ideas that built things so wondrous that they required over 200 years to incubate; of concepts so great that armies and eras would fawn over them until perfection; of desires so deep that only liberty and freedom were food enough for them; and to delay his first brave step another day longer would impose a hardship upon this beautiful, bountiful land and this great union and upon those great ideas and concepts and desires so heavy that surely the land would teeter and break and fall and crumble before he would ever reach the great sea he so desired to see, and so doom forever the possibility that (with his bride) he would rise up at dawn, which would be his personal dawning, and forever set forth a new order and a brave new mercantile store along a riverbank out west somewhere.

Never take a nap after an enormous lunch.