Bold Spirit - Linda Hunt [6]
The sponsors wanted to prove the physical endurance of women, at a time when many still considered it fashionable to be dependent and weak. Helga accepted certain stipulations within the contract, even agreeing to wear the “reform costume,” a bicycle skirt that sponsors wanted her to advertise once she got to Salt Lake City. She and Clara were allowed to leave with only $5 a piece and then had to earn their way across; were to visit the state capitals in the west; and were to get the signatures of important political persons along the way.9 When she visited Idaho’s Governor William J. McConnell at the State House, a friend of Mayor Belt’s, his expression of interest in their walk and his personal note on their introductory document increased her awareness of the importance of their attempt.10
As she left Boise with her resolve fortified, and their supplies replenished, Helga began to worry about meeting another stipulation of the contract: The deadline for their walk required they be in New York City within seven months. The rains slowed their earlier days, and it took several days of working in Boise to earn enough money to continue. They needed to arrive in early December, but the sponsors did allow additional days if they became ill.11 Because getting lost in America’s vast continent in the west was one of the dangers, Helga and Clara had planned to follow the railway routes, including the Union Pacific to Denver.
Helga and Clara planned to follow the railroad routes to avoid getting lost and to find places with food and shelter.
Courtesy Library of Congress. LC Railroad Maps, 64; digital Id g3701p rr000640. Detail of this photograph on this page.
Although enduring drenching rains and wading through hip-deep flood waters in Idaho failed to sap Helga’s spirits, it did make her receptive to advice on short cuts. Outside of Shoshone they apparently decided to leave the rails, probably hoping to find a shortcut route that had been used by pioneers seeking a faster way from Pocatello to Boise during the Oregon Trail and gold rush days. For three days Helga and Clara wandered “without a mouthful to eat,” eventually becoming lost in the Snake River lava beds of southern Idaho, a treacherous maze of cracked lava, crevices, and sagebrush.12 Jagged rocks tore up their thin leather shoes and temperatures in the mid-eighties smothered them in their long Victorian dresses. Even more troubling, the fear of rattlesnakes hovered around every step in this barren moonscape land.
During these days of gnawing hunger, intense heat, and disorientation, when all the vocal criticism of the folly of their venture looked frighteningly true, Helga may have faced her own fears over the real and present dangers of this odyssey. Her Scandinavian neighbors saw her as a “determined” woman who achieves what “she makes up her mind” to do, and Helga’s actions often reflected her inner confidence and quiet faith.13 She had struggled earlier with anxieties, especially during pivotal challenges, such as the time of a debilitating accident or during prairie fires and tornadoes on the Minnesota prairie. Her belief since childhood in the power of God undoubtedly led her to pray for Divine help as she and Clara grew weaker, seemingly helpless in their own ability to decipher how to get out of this strange land.
But the stark danger of their present situation could have caused her to wonder if she naively underestimated the risks she placed Clara and herself in, and too blithely dismissed the fears of those who counseled her to stay home with her husband, Ole, and their children. This life-threatening detour was a mistake so costly that Clara and she risked leaving their bleached bones on the lava beds as the sole surviving remnant of their courageous venture. Helga knew, because they no longer were near