Spring is here. It’s time to pack the bags, load the truck, and get on the trail of Lewis and Clark.
Bismarck, North Dakota, April 16 — I’m bustling about to get out of town. I’ve had pickup hitch issues. I’ve stood in line at the DMV to get new license tags for my Airstream. I’ve done half a dozen loads of laundry. I’ve chosen the smallest number of books I’ll need to do my work over the next few months and doubled that number.
It’s Wednesday afternoon, and I must be on the road Saturday morning. Meanwhile, I have writing to do and a few important Zoom meetings. By the time you read this, I will be car-ambulating through the heartland.
Busy with last-minute chores and errands, yes, but roll away. It will come Saturday. I’ll be gone for no fewer than seven weeks.
It’s hectic, but I’m much better organized than I was last year at this time. I’ll sigh deeply when I get out on the highway. I’m sure I will stop three times before I get 100 miles away to make sure I brought my wallet, power supplies, computer, cameras …
One of my heroes is the Victorian explorer, linguist, diplomat, and adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890). He was one of the first non-Muslims to penetrate Mecca right up to the Black Stone at the portal of the Kaaba. He approached in disguise, speaking fluent Arabic, impersonating a dervish. He knew that to be caught as an infidel in that sacred Islamic district would mean death. That was the joy of it for Burton. He was also one of the discoverers of the source of the Nile in 1856. He knew 29 languages. And he said this, one of my favorite statements about voyages of discovery:
“Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Civilization, man feels once more happy.”
Well, I’m certainly going to distant lands. The size of America is staggering. Who knows? It may get bigger soon! Since I’ve been in all 50 states and have had the joy of traveling extensively in the American West, I won’t exactly be wandering unknown lands. Still, I understand what it means to shake off some of the fetters of civilization. And how many spectacular highways in the American West have I never been on after a lifetime of auto sojourning? I know a great deal about the Lewis and Clark expedition, and by Christmas, I’ll know much more. I’ve traveled the Lewis and Clark Trail in all sorts of ways, but never in one fell swoop from Jefferson’s Virginia to Astoria, Oregon.
My mind is brimming with ideas and projects. I know from last year’s experience following John Steinbeck around the country that I won’t have as much time for reading, research, and writing as I want and need. Heck, I’m still trying to make sense of the Steinbeck tour half a year later.
Mostly I am anticipating my first nights back in the “rig,” as I call my Airstream Flying Cloud. I have new reading pillows. New sheets. Better bins for storage. A new generator. The last one, purchased from a major American manufacturer, pooped out after 30 days. So my rancher and rodeo friend Sara Vollmer took me by the hand and made me buy the preferred Honda generator. Sara knows. She has been driving her three daughters on the Great Plains rodeo circuit for the last decade. She looks at my fastidious approach to “roughing it” with quasi-contemptuous bemusement.
On the Road With Lewis and Clark
There is nothing I like better than being in my Airstream in some beautiful place, finished with a simple dinner, sitting at my dinette desk reading, taking notes, and writing, a glass of pinot noir within easy reach, feeling the slow advance of dusk — in the middle of nowhere. Then, when my back has had enough hours of sitting up that straight, I retire to the bed with the intention to plump the pillows and read on for a couple of hours. Typically, within 15 minutes, I am asleep. The only rival to that joyous experience is my daily shower. Assuming I am hooked to a water supply, I can luxuriate in my full-sized RV shower for 15 minutes or more. The water heater is tankless, meaning I have hot water on demand as long as I can stave off the feeling of decadence.
I know that I will be retracing the Lewis and Clark Trail to the Pacific and back. I know, too, that I intend to get on the major rivers (in a variety of watercraft): the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Missouri (of course), the Snake, the Columbia; and on the way back, the Yellowstone. I know I will stop at all the Lewis and Clark visitor centers. And I know that for two four-day periods, I will be canoeing different sections of the Missouri River in east-central Montana, the most beautiful stretch of the entire 2,500-mile river.
Beyond that, I am open to whatever happens out there. Of course, I will dig into the journals and a score of secondary books. Without question, I will read the actual journals every morning before getting on the highway. I know I’ll do some writing, video, and photo essays, but will I be able to fully open my mind and heart to the experience? Will I regain a complete sense of wonder about this remarkable epic of exploration and (frankly) American imperialism? I remember reading an abridged version of the journals 40 years ago for the first time. It was magic. It had the enchantment of Lord of the Rings and Gulliver’s Travels. Still, it was real, at least so far as white Army officers and privates in a slaveholding nation with a detached view of Native American sovereignty could describe the “real.” Of course, the story depends on three elements that were not specifically about Lewis and Clark and may not be very predictable. The first, of course, is Sacagawea. What we know about her could be contained easily in a passport book, yet she is a mythical giant in American memory, a kind of Native American goddess. There are more statues of Sacagawea in America than of any other woman. You take Sacagawea out of this story — with her ne’er-do-well and brutish husband and her charming baby boy Pomp — and I’m not actually sure there would have been a bicentennial of the expedition (2003-2006). I believe that she — Sacagawea, born in several places, raised in several ways, buried in several places — is THE essential tipping of this story from mighty interesting to national epic.
Second, York, Clark’s enslaved body man, his valet, about the same age as his master, having grown up from early childhood with his fellow human of almost precisely the same age, fellow male, fellow Kentuckian, fellow traveler, and yet — we must never forget — Clark’s property, his slave who would learn after the expedition returned that he must never forget his place as an owned human being. The great irony is that Indigenous people were intrigued by the one Black man among this group of more than 30 whites (and a Native woman). They wondered if perhaps York was the leader of this band. They reckoned he might have special powers — what the Lakota called wakan — and one skeptical Hidatsa leader spit on his fingers and attempted to rub off what he assumed was York’s black paint. York was sought after by Native women for his exogenous DNA. Or maybe just because he was groovy. York is not as central to the mythological success of the Lewis and Clark story as Sacagawea. Still, he has always added wonderful variety and complication to the story, now more than ever. His presence on the expedition raises the question of race, which is never far from any American story. In our time, York has become — we have read into him, as we do all mythic beings — a proud freedom fighter. The great statue of him overlooking the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky, depicts him as a human rights icon. The expedition’s journals and the letters Clark wrote about him after the return suggest a very strong, talented, and determined man.
Finally, there is the Newfoundland dog Seaman. Lewis bought the dog more or less on a whim before the expedition left Pittsburgh, perhaps because his rival explorer, Alexander Mackenzie, who crossed the continent by way of Canada in 1793, had a Newfoundland. Seaman is almost automatically the children’s favorite Lewis and Clark expedition member. When I lecture about the expedition before young people, either as a scholar or in character as Lewis, the No. 1 question children ask is, “What happened to the dog?” And the answer is: We don’t know. That’s one of the intriguing but frustrating mysteries of the Lewis and Clark story. Seaman was last mentioned in July 1806 when the expedition was in Montana and never mentioned again.
Brace yourself. There will be a lot of Lewis and Clark commentary in the next seven months, but I promise to try to make it interesting, and of course, I will be writing about much more than the expedition. For one thing, I mean to look at the entire frontier dynamic, what might be called the “Euro-Americanization of the Continent.” Manifest Destiny — which the current president invoked in precisely those famous loaded words in his second inaugural address a few months ago. And I’ll be lured off the Lewis and Clark story by the scores of wonderful places, museums, historical sites, National Parks, and people I will encounter.
As I wrote these words, UPS delivered a package at my front door. It contained a book on how we assign names to places, particularly how places in what’s now the United States were named by Lewis and Clark, John Wesley Powell, John C. Fremont, and myriad others, often local people of less prominence. It’s called Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place Naming in the United States, by George Stewart, 1945. It’s a classic. Names and naming are hugely interesting to me, including name changes, which — as you can see — occur in both directions on the political spectrum. Mount McKinley or Denali. Gulf of this, Gulf of that. It’s a question of whose America is it?
I’ve chosen my audiobook to listen to during the doldrums stretches of highway. I’ve got an informal playlist of road songs.
I’ve got my National Geographic Atlas of the United States. I’m paid up at AAA.
I’m ready to go rediscover America.