When the rest of the world was sheltering in place, Brandon Mowinkel was sheltering in the cab of his Chevy Silverado quad cab.
After school got out in May, Mowinkel decided it was time for a roadtrip. By then, the world had been in lockdown for three months.
“March, April and May were pretty tough,” said Mowinkel, principal at Milford Junior/Senior High. “It was a tremendously weird moment in human history.”
He loaded his pickup with a cooler filled with bread, peanut butter and jelly, crackers, beef jerky and water.
He filled the gas tank every morning but tried not to stop in towns to eat.
“I ate as much pb&j as I could,” he said with a laugh.
He finally gave himself a break in Crawford where he stopped for breakfast.
He didn’t really care where he went. The school year was done, so he decided to take a week and just drive, returning home by Memorial Day.
“I had no plans where to go,” he said. “In the morning, I’d pick where I was going to end up and drive. If I came to a small town, I’d stop.”
He said the adventure evolved as he drove.
When he came across people, which was uncommon, they were skeptical of him, he said. No one talked to each other.
His original plan was to sleep on an air mattress in the bed of the pickup. Because of storms, he only spent one night outside.
“I had to squish in the back seat of the truck,” he said. “For three nights, it stormed hard. Even if I’d had a tent, I would probably have slept in the truck.”
He had planned to write a book about his experience. Called “Five Days in May,” the book covers his journey across the state, sharing his thoughts and photos from May 19 through 24, 2020.
The cover photo was a no-brainer, he said. An old school bus served as a pressbox in Merriman.
“I always knew that would be the cover,” he said. “There was never any other.”
The trip begins
Day one ended at the Harlan County Reservoir in south central Nebraska.
“That was the turning point of the trip,” Mowinkel said. “I struggled that first night. How do I do the next five to six days?”
He took a picture of the spillway at sunrise, and that inspired him to continue.
“I wanted to come home,” he said. “I was a right turn away from a left turn to go home.”
But he went on.
The morning of day two brought him to Orleans where he found the remains of the school, which had been destroyed in a fire. He looked up the story “because I had nowhere to be,” he said.
He said he didn’t photograph the school while he was there, and now he wishes he had.
He found himself looking for railroads, schools and downtowns in the towns he visited.
“I took time to explore,” he said. “I had no plans where to go.”
He stopped at Lake McConaughy, the largest manmade lake in Nebraska. Mowinkel had been there when he was 5, but with everything shut down, the lake was deserted.
“That made covid sink in,” he said. “On May 20, it was 86 degrees, and there was no one there.”
From Lake McConaughy, Mowinkel went to Agate Fossil Beds National Monument.
“There was nobody there, not another soul,” he said.
Lost in the dark
Day three ended at Toadstool Geologic Park in northwestern Nebraska, the one location he’d had in mind when he left home.
“It was pretty awesome,” he said. “It’s a hidden gem.”
Mowinkel took his camera into the rocks to take pictures of the night sky. He lost his way heading back to his truck. With no cell phone service, no modern amenities and no light, Mowinkel had to use his instincts to get back to the truck.
“That was the whole climax of the book,” he said. “I fought through panic. I was in the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t find my truck.
“I couldn’t ever live that moment again.”
Once he did find his truck, he spent about an hour writing about his experience.
“The only sound echoing through the canyon was that of my camera shutter with the only light coming from the stars a million miles away,” he wrote. “The darkness was broken by a light which flickered through the hills to the west. Thoughts of a grave robber returning to reclaim his loot ran through my unsettled mind. Panic raced through my veins, but I could not move. Who was it? What did they want? Was I supposed to be out here? Am I safe?”
The light he saw was a coal train, making its way from Nebraska to Wyoming.
But he still couldn’t find his truck. He climbed one of the hills and looked around, finding the truck not far from where he was.
“That was the moment of the trip, to get lost and get found again,” he said.
The night he was there, a group of bicyclists was camping at the park, too. They stayed in their area, and he stayed in his. Mowinkel said he was a little disappointed he didn’t get to learn their stories.
Mowinkel spent the second night at Toadstool in the cab of his truck, waiting through a storm, hoping the riders were OK. They left before he awoke the next morning.
Family footprint
Day four’s stop in Whitney was a happy accident for Mowinkel. His family homesteaded in that area, so he decided to see what he could find.
He called his sister Melanie, and she told him about Nellie Vosbeck, their great-great-great-grandmother. She immigrated to Nebraska in 1885 and staked her claim. She died months away from proving her claim.
Mowinkel wanted to find her grave, but the wooden grave marker is lost to time.
“Mother Earth cradles their bodies for all eternity with God watching over,” Mowinkel wrote in his book.
By day four, themes were starting to emerge. He spent time while driving dictating his thoughts and ideas into his phone. Those became the basis for the book’s chapters.
Processing
The book, “Five Days in May,” chronicles Mowinkel’s trip. It took over a year to complete, and some of what he originally wrote didn’t make the cut.
He wrote the epilogue first.
“I knew I couldn’t add anything after July,” he said. “It helped me focus.”
Most of the writing was done in July, then he put the manuscript away. In November, he took it back out to reread. He spent Christmas break of 2020 piecing everything together and putting it into a narrative.
“If I wanted to make it happen, it has to be now,” he said.
In March, he started to finalize the book, making more cuts.
He used his journal to provide details as he wrote.
Mowinkel started keeping a journal March 14, 2020, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. He wrote every day through May 2, 2021, with sporadic entries since then. He filled six books over the year.
“I’d never journaled in my life,” he said, adding that all the entries are hand-written. “I have run out of a couple pens.”
Mowinkel decided to keep a separate journal during his five-day odyssey.
“I stopped a couple times and wrote what I saw and didn’t see, feelings, emotions,” he said.
He said the trip journal was a vital piece of his book.
Picture this
“We talk about passion, purpose and job skills,” Mowinkel said. “Passions and purpose don’t have to be the same thing.”
For him, photography is a passion, providing an outlet and release.
This project provides another way for Mowinkel to show the students at Milford how everything ties together into a person’s story.
Mowinkel took about 1,500 pictures over the five days. He had to narrow that to about 50 photos, not an easy task, he said.
Some of the pictures included in the book jumped out as he went back through the photographs. Others he chose because of the story they told him.
“It was for me to remember,” he said.
He found himself taking pictures of doorways in the various towns. One on a side street in Long Pine stood out to him. The blue and white door contrasted sharply with the weatherbeaten white paint on the rest of the building front.
“There are those moments – you don’t know why, but you need to take the picture,” he said.
That door was one of those moments.
Some of the moments he missed, though, even though he told himself to stop and take the picture.
One of his favorites is a picture from Hay Springs. An old football scoreboard sits in a yard with the town elevator soaring behind it.
“It’s cool moments like that,” Mowinkel said.
When he got to Smith Falls, his last overnight stop, he realized he didn’t have a picture of himself for the book, something he felt was needed. So, he set up his tripod and worked the camera shutter from his phone.
“It took awhile to get it,” he said.
Do it yourself
Mowinkel did everything for the book, from writing the copy to taking the pictures to laying out the pages.
“I didn’t know when I’d be able to work on it,” he said. “It was about when I had time to do it.”
Many late nights were devoted to putting everything together.
“So many times I wanted to be done,” he said. “All along the way people supported me – you have to finish. It’s a story worth telling.”
He said his sisters Melanie Olson and Amanda Jochum played a huge role in finishing the book, as did his parents, Bill and Mary Jo Mowinkel. His wife Shelly and children Calyn, Addie and Zephyr gave him the chance to go on this trip.
“From the minute I told them, they were all in. Nobody questioned it,” Mowinkel said. “It was pretty cool. They all supported me from day one.”
In the end, Mowinkel decided to self-publish his book. He’d looked at some companies early in the process, but those didn’t work out.
“It was part of the journey,” he said, adding that he learned a lot about the publishing process by going this route. “I know I didn’t do it right.”
When it came time to print “Five Days in May,” Mowinkel found North Printing Company in York. He said Tony North understood what he was trying to do.
As part of the publishing process, Mowinkel learned about ISBN numbers, Library of Congress numbers and bar codes.
“It was about learning and growing,” Mowinkel said, adding with a grin, “I won’t do it again.”
He also created a website, brandonmowinkel.com, through which people can order copies of the book.
He plans to post more of his pictures and add blog entries including stories not in the book.
Overall, he said, it was a fun project he’s glad he did, and now he has a book in hand to show for it. He hopes, down the road, someone will stumble on his story like his family stumbled on Nellie’s.
