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In 2011, writer Buck and his brother Nick set off to make an authentic covered wagon crossing of the 2,000-mile Oregon Trail. They knew that their chances of failure were high. “Even if your wheels break halfway across,” his editor told him, “There’s still a great book there.” The Bucks became the first wagon travelers in more than a century to complete a crossing of the trail.
The idea for the trip was born at a restored Pony Express station in Kansas, where an expert on the Oregon Trail practically dared Buck to follow the road from Missouri to Oregon by saying that nobody had done it since the pioneers in the late 1800s. Buck was no stranger to such adventures. He and his older brother Kern flew across America in a Piper Cub at ages 15 and 17, a historic trip Buck recounts in his 1997 memoir, “Flight of Passage.”
This time, Buck teams up with his brother Nick – a horseman, carpenter and actor – three mules, and a filthy Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl, to travel from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Baker City, Oregon, over the course of four months. Along the way, the Buck brothers dodge thunderstorms in Nebraska, chase runaway mules across the Wyoming plains, scout more than 500 miles of nearly vanished trail on foot, cross the Rockies, and make desperate 50-mile forced marches for water.
Buck began his career in journalism at the Berkshire Eagle and was a longtime staff writer for the Hartford Courant. He has written for Vanity Fair, New York, Life, and many other publications, and his stories have won the Eugene S. Pulliam National Journalism Writing Award and the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award. He lives in northwest Connecticut.
The talk will be held from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the Louise Parker Berry Community Room.
The Darien Library is located at1441 Post Road.
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