Mother Abagail's trail sign

Mother Abagail's trail sign was a simple but decisive object: a piece of picket fence nailed to a crate panel, painted with white letters, and planted in the dooryard of her Hemingford Home farmhouse. It was created by Nick Andros on the morning of July 26, 1990, just before the party of survivors—Nick, Tom Cullen, Ralph Brentner, Dick Ellis, Olivia Walker, June Brinkmeyer, and the little girl Gina McCone—loaded their vehicles and headed west toward Boulder. The sign faced the area where the dirt road became Mother Abagail's driveway, and Nick buried the bottom three feet of the picket so that nothing but a big wind could knock it over. Its message read: "We have gone to Boulder, Colorado. We are taking secondary roads to avoid traffic jams. Citizen's Band Channel 14."

Purpose and Authority

The sign was not merely a directional marker; it was an act of prophetic organization. Mother Abagail had told Nick and Ralph Brentner the night before that God had shown her in dreams that the survivors were meant to go to Boulder. She had resisted the call—she wanted to die on her own land—but she accepted that her role was to lead them west. Nick, though an agnostic, felt the force of her conviction and acted on it. The sign translated her visionary authority into a practical, reproducible instruction for anyone who might arrive after them. It was the first piece of infrastructure the Free Zone created, predating the power plant repairs, the burial crews, and the elected committee. It declared that this was not a random scattering of refugees but a community with a destination and a method.

Route and Communication

The sign specified secondary roads, a deliberate choice to avoid the clogged interstates. It also invited contact on CB Channel 14, a channel that Ralph Brentner would later monitor from his radio setup in Boulder. This channel became the Free Zone's primary means of long-distance communication, allowing scattered groups to coordinate their approach. The sign thus functioned as both a physical landmark and a broadcast beacon, linking the old woman's homestead to the new settlement hundreds of miles away.

Reception and Legacy

When Larry Underwood's party reached Mother Abagail's house in late July, they found the sign and followed its directions. Larry, who had been tracking Harold Lauder's trail of Payday candy wrappers and painted signs across the country, recognized the pattern and felt a surge of hope. The sign was the last in a chain of messages—from the Ogunquit barn to the Stovington plague center to the Nebraska farmhouse—that guided survivors to Boulder. It outlasted its creator: Mother Abagail died on September 5, 1990, but the sign remained standing through the winter. When Stu Redman and Tom Cullen finally returned to Boulder in January 1991, they passed through the same dooryard and saw the sign still there, a quiet testament to the journey that had ended and the one that was still beginning.

Thematic Significance

The trail sign embodies the tension between divine guidance and human agency that runs through the novel. Mother Abagail claimed her authority came from God, but the sign itself was a mundane object—wood, paint, nails—made by a deaf-mute young man who did not believe in God. It worked not because of miracles but because people chose to follow it. In a world where the old systems of communication and transportation had collapsed, the sign represented a new kind of order: fragile, handmade, but sufficient. It was the opposite of the dark man's method, which relied on fear, surveillance, and the threat of crucifixion. The sign invited; it did not compel. And people came.