Porter Rockwell

Not Alone

mikemjensen Porter Rockwell Leave a comment

My novel, Ain’t Dead Yet, published today. In honor of its main character, I stopped by Ol’ Port’s gravesite to express gratitude for the inspiration and to say hi.

Around his headstone, past the well worn grass, the base had been circled with pennies. If the internet is correct, and why would it not be, this means that each one is someone who has visited. I was just the latest one.

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Off to the side, someone else had left a six pack. The bottles being empty, I’m not sure who drank them, the donor or the recipient. But the gesture made me smile and again provided evidence that my visit wasn’t exclusive.

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Before I left, another couple joined me at the site, they too had been trying to find Porter’s final resting spot.

Even after 135 years, Rockwell’s place is still the place to be.

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As My Great Grandmother Saw It

mikemjensen History, Porter Rockwell Leave a comment

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I read once in a written family history that when my Great Grandmother, as a little girl, first arrived in Utah from Denmark. she saw a valley filled with teepees and it frightened her. In the early aught years of the 1900’s, things were not exactly settled and after what she would have known about America and the west before arriving, her fear would have been well understood.

The image that she described set firm in my mind and when I saw the image I found on Pinterest today, they seemed to match.

It is also the same image I hope to provide the reader within my book Ain’t Dead Yet.

Thanks Great Grandma.

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A Touch of the Past

mikemjensen History, Porter Rockwell Leave a comment

Every once in a while, two paths cross: the past and the present.

I’ve been zigzagging across these paths for a while now and especially over the last few months. Following along the Pony Express Trail, passing old stations and land marks known and marked from history, sometimes the past isn’t so long ago.

On one trip this past spring, I came across the preserved cabin built by Porter Rockwell in Eureka, Utah. It stands outside, under a protective roof, like a proud trophy or monument to a remembered hero. While I stood admiring the work that must of been used in order to move and protect this old structure, several other passer-thru’s stopped to look as well. Ol’ Port still can draw them in!

I snagged a picture and touched the cabin. Although the oils of our hands didn’t mix, the act of touching something that someone who died nearly a hundred years before I was born had touched, made that person real and become a part of me.

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IMG_20130407_190033Within the echoes of the past

Stirs the whispers of the future.
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