And for the season it was winter . . .

I met my graduate class for the second time last night. We had a good discussion of early American narratives of exploration, contact (with tribal peoples) and settlement. One of our focal texts for the evening was our anthology's excerpt of William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, a history of the pilgrims, the Mayflower and all that. And as is always the case, I stand amazed in my imagination as I try to put myself in the moment of the pilgrims' arrival at Cape Cod in that November of 1620. Bradford describes it thus:

Being thus passed the vast ocean, . . . they had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. . . . And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilds beasts and wild men--and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all civil parts of the world.

No matter the wrongs and rights of these Puritans, Separatists, pilgrims, and all the many wrongs and rights that have followed from their actions, I'm always amazed at their faith and their commitment and their strength.