Chapter 22: Mountain Men for Life.
“Sometimes friends fight.” - Abby Ruebush
I have written about my best friend Abby before, but she is too important to not write about again. Abby grew up with me. Our folks were friends, my mom watched Abby and Amy, her sister, who was my middle sister’s age, and we were constantly at each other’s homes for play, homework, sleepovers, dinner, you name it. We were together so often, our high school principal made up nicknames for us because. Abby and I went to junior college together, then when she came to University, we lived in the same apartment. We still, to this day, email, call and text each other and try to see each other at least once a year. Through all of life, she has been my friend who has “stuck closer than a brother.”
I remember how often we would disagree. I tended to be bossy at times, and she tended to have strong opinions. My middle sister told me once about a conversation she had with my mom while listening to Abby and me play. She asked my mom why I was so bossy to Abby. My mom said, “Abby doesn’t seem to mind, and if she did, she’d say something.” Abby and I didn’t always get along. We would argue and get upset with each other, but we always worked it out, forgave, and mended our hurt feelings. Abby is now an elementary teacher, but she has taught junior high as well. She will tell me every year that it’s time for her to give her lesson on “sometimes friends fight” as the emotions and bickerings of her students grow. She tells them our story of how we didn’t always agree, and didn’t always work things out quickly, but how, after a bit of time and talk, we always worked things out.
For as much as Abby and I spent time together, we couldn’t have been more different in our likes and interests. She liked gold and fancy things. I didn’t. She liked pretend makeup and doing hair. I didn’t. She wasn’t a huge outdoor girl. I was. I loved to ride my bike and climb trees. She sort of liked that for me. I ate anything, she only ate things that didn’t touch on her plate. On paper, we would not make good friends. In real life though, we make amazing friends. Every year when we see each other again, we pick up where we last left off without missing a beat. She’s a farmer’s wife now and has a handsome son who is the same age as my eldest child. If we lived near each other, I could see us being the friends who pop over to each other’s house unannounced because we were in the neighborhood and being comfortable with each other to not have it be an inconvenience. I wish we had that, but I live in one state, and she is 862 miles East of me. Instead, I look forward to our texts and yearly visits.
When I think about the mountain woman of the past I’m in awe. She more than likely traveled with her husband into the mountains, along with all the other mountain men and their wives, if they had them. The mountain woman of the past was one tough lady!! To be able to tolerate all the other men without having very many women friends, if any, must have been a challenge. There was a lady, Marie Dorion Venier Toupin, a member of the Iowa Tribe, who was the only woman to be sent by John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company into the Pacific Northwest. After a long and arduous journey, where she had and lost her third child, she took off on another expedition five months later. This hardcore woman traveled with the men and her two small children. When all of the men were killed and scalped as she was heading to warn them of the imminent attack, she and her children survived on their own, setting traps and snares, eating berries, and fishing, and eating her horses for 53 days in the winter. This woman was amazing! I cannot imagine having two kids, carrying one of them on my back, and being pregnant with a third while traveling across the country on foot! I wonder if she had any women friends at all. Being as she was the only woman of her party, I would imagine she did not have that luxury. What a challenging life that would have been, not just physically, but emotionally, to not have a cherished friend to talk with.
Abby has had her own set of personal and physical challenges. When she was in eighth grade, she had her first open-heart surgery. There are many other challenges that she has endured, but always gracefully. I believe that Abby is just as tough as any mountain woman of past or present in her ability to persevere and find the positives in life. She is always ready to share a giggle or a laugh; she brightened up my day so often! Even now, she will share a picture from the past or a memory that reminds me of all the joy she has brought into my life over the years. Abby has managed to overcome every adversity put before her with a loving heart because of her love of God. Her example and friendship is something I cherish dearly. Being able to have a life-long friend like her is worth more every little fight we may have had. Those disagreements helped us to realize how important the other person was to us and made our friendship truly worth fighting for. I treasure Abby and her friendship, she is truly a blessing to my life.
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