Colt Killed Creek

Journal 2005 09 14
Colt Killed Creek

Colt Killed Creek. Horsemeat. Americans don’t like horsemeat. Today after traveling seventeen miles the Corps camps and kills one of the colts to eat for dinner. The Captains mark the occasion by naming the creek for their actions. That name holds today.

Lewis describes today’s work this way, “The Mountains which we passed to day much worst than yesterday the last excessively bad & thickly Strowed with falling timber & Pine Spruce fur Hackmatak & Tamerack, Steep & Stoney our men and horses much fatigued.”

The fact that precipitation was falling as rain and hail in the valleys and as snow on the mountaintops must have contributed to their fatigue. The Corps was in that dangerous arena of hypothermia. Most people associate hypothermia with the frigid conditions of snow and ice. While a really low temperature is always a threat to hypothermia, experts and I agree that the most dangerous threat of hypothermia occurs in the conditions of this day of travel. Cold, barely above freezing and wet. Deceptive to the ones facing the conditions. I’ve been a little hypothermic in similar conditions right here in Bellevue. I was working outside on a rainy fall day with the temperatures around 35 to 40. As long as I was moving and working hard I generated body heat. When I stopped I quickly chilled and shivered and could feel my movements and judgment waning. I had a warm truck to climb into and recover. These guys must have been tough. And they must have also been excellent fire builders.

What are the conditions like in your life today? Are you in danger and don’t know it? Are you working hard thinking you are pleasing God when He is calling you to come in out of the rain while He feeds and warms the core of your being?

If the work of your life puts you in a place where the rain and temperature of the weather are slowing sapping your life and energy stop and take cover under the wings of the Almighty. He will restore you. He might even have horsemeat for you for dinner. Americans don’t like horsemeat. And to that I can only add, “Even the bitter tastes sweet to the hungry.” Proverbs 27:7