For a few weeks now, I’ve been meaning to write about Gabrielle Burton and something she and her family did that I think is pretty cool.

First, some background: Gabrielle is the author of Searching for Tamsen Donner, which the University of Nebraska Press published earlier this year, and which I’ve written about before. For Gabrielle, writing a book about the wife of the leader of the ill-fated and famous Donner Party was as much a labor of love as it was a labor of scholarship. Gabrielle became obsessed with Tamsen Donner more than 30 years ago, when she was a stay-at-home mom trying to become a writer and was searching for both writing material and inspiration. In Tamsen, she found both.

Thirty years ago, Gabrielle, along with her husband and five daughters, retraced the Donner Party journey in their family station wagon, a journey that provides much of the material in Searching for Tamsen Donner. Earlier this month, they retraced another route of Tamsen’s.

When the Donner Party became trapped in the Sierra Nevadas, Tamsen, her husband, George, and their children set up camp near Alder Creek. The rest of the party set up camp in a small cabin, about seven miles away. Tamsen Donner walked between the two camps several times during the moths they were trapped, and Gabrielle thought it was important that she walk those seven miles, too.

Subdivisions, an Interstate and other obstacles have altered the terrain of Tamsen’s path. Even so, Gabrielle said, the walk was a moving experience. Journalist Frances Dinkelspiel talked to Gabrielle just before her walk, and you can read what she had to say about it on her blog.

And that’s it for this week. Have a great weekend!