Return to the Garden

Journal 2006 07 10
Return to the Garden

Clark records that the men woke up to a cold frost. So cold that their water buckets had about three quarters of an inch of ice on them. That is not all bad. The mosquitoes have been so “troublesome” that the men and horses welcomed the hour after sunset when the air temperature cooled to the point that the mosquitoes fled. The actual temperatures are not known since the last thermometer broke during last fall’s descent of the Columbia. The men are not prone to guessing. They only record their observations.

Six canoes were loaded with everything not essential to horse travel and set off downriver. They covered ninety seven miles and pass six of their upstream camps in the process! The rivermen camped near their August 11th camp of last year. That distance is about five times their upstream pace. Do you believe they might have been thinking about getting home?

Captain Clark notes “…we saw great numbers of beaver lying on the Shores in the Sun. wild young Gees and ducks are common in this river. we killed two young gees this evening. I saw several large rattle Snakes in passing the rattle Snake Mountain they were fierce.” No buffalo or elk for this party yet. The rattlesnakes “were fierce.” Oh boy does that bring reality home to me. I hate snakes. Doesn’t it seem like every great adventure movie made must include snakes? Reality is filled with danger and dangerous creatures. How these men traveled through snake infested mountains with none getting bitten is just amazing.

Lewis and his party add elk to the menu tonight and are grateful for the hides that come with them. They returned to the virtual game preserve that was the food rich plains of the Midwest. He describes it like this, “I sent the packhorses on with Sergt. Gass directing hem to halt and encamp at the first timber which proved to be about 7 ms. I retained frazier to assist in skining the Elk. we wer about this time joined by drewer. a large brown bear swam the river near where we were and drewyer shot and killed it. by the time we butchered thes 2 elk and bar it was nearly dark we loaded our horses with the best of the meat and pursud the party and found them encamped as they had been directed in the first timber. we did not reach them until 9 P. M. they informed us that they had seen a very large bear in the plains which had pursued Sergt. Gass and Thomson some distance but their horses enabled them to keep out of it's reach. they were affraid to fire on the bear least their horses should throw them as they were unaccustomed to the gun. we killed five deer 3 Elk and a bear today saw vast herds of buffaloe in the evening below us on the river. we hered them bellowing about us all night. vast assemblages of wolves. saw a large herd of Elk making down the river.” Ho hum, another day’s work on the prairie. Killed and skinned two elk. While skinning the elk a bear came swimming across the river to steal the meat and our best hunter, Drouillard (spelled Drewyer by Lewis) just happens to come back to us, spots the bear coming up on us and kills it. The other men don’t shoot the bears pursuing them because they don’t want to spook the horses. And finally, we are on constant guard for the vast packs of wolves seeking our kill also.
And they must have been feeling rich because of the abundance of bison and elk herds in sight. The buffalo were bellowing all night making it hard to sleep because it was mating season, or the rut, as it is called.

If it weren’t for the hordes of mosquitoes and fierce rattlesnakes the men may have thought they were entering the Garden of God, Eden. For many years, and even today, the Great Plains has been referred to as “The Breadbasket of America” for its ability to produce the crops that continue to feed our nation. It fed and sustained the Corps of Discovery in sumptuous fashion. In fact, Lewis notes that they took the best parts of the elk and bison meat with them. They were confident they would find more animals for the balance of their journey, not less. On the way up the river, Lewis expressed concern over not utilizing all the meat they harvested fearing the day would come when it would no longer be available. Those days were behind them and they knew it.

Over the period of these writings I have not recited Psalm 23 where King David speaks these often memorized verses, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
(Psalms 23:1-6 MKJV)

I wonder how many of these men began to see that these words were being fulfilled as they anticipated the finish and saw the wonder of what was being accomplished. Surely many of these men had learned to read at the feet of their mothers from the Bible. And many must have gone to bed with these words dancing through their minds, “You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.” I pray we all may lay down with that same sense of wonder and satisfaction this very night.

Proceed on.