This is the memory palace. I'm Nate Demet.

Having left St. Louis behind,

Private Robinson set out on his first mission into the west.

Along the Santa Fe Trail as so many Americans,

traders and trappers and scouts and soldiers had done before him since a Missouri man

had first carved out the route in 1821, after word had traveled north at Mexico,

having freed itself from Spanish rule was open for business.

Now in June of 1846, Private Jacob Robinson of New Hampshire

rode out with the first Missouri-mounted volunteers, one of 500 new recruits,

eagred to cross the continent and take the southwest away from Mexico.

They marched 15 miles a day at most days, following the hoof and footprints of earlier expeditions,

the rutted paths carved out by wagon wheels, now greened over and wildflowered,

Kansas unfurling in all directions, the sush of tall grass, the buzz of summer bugs,

the air Private Robinson would write, and Private Robinson, the son of a newspaper man, could write.

He wrote that a shout of joy ran through all the ranks, as they inhaled the clean air of the green

in sunny prairie. He would remember a thousand miles on and beyond. That rush of a relief,

that feeling of being finally free, of the confinement of the fort, marching and circled the

drills in the dust now behind them. Now replaced by open fields in endless sky, an air-sweet with

primrose and lavender and prairie flocks, distant campfires, the sounds of creeks and of chickadees.

An entourage of civilians accompanied them, coopers and wheelrides and farriers in the lake,

men and some women who knew the trail, who had waited its head looking to attach themselves to a

wagon train, who could pay for their particular expertise, or provide safety and numbers for a trip

...