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Backtracking: By Foot, Canoe, and Subaru Along the Lewis and Clark Trail
With a spirit of exploration rarely seen in modern times, Ben Long and his wife, Karen Nichols, quit their jobs, sold their house, and set out to follow in the footsteps of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Their quest: To look at the plants and animals encountered during the Corps of Discovery's great endeavor and report on how nature is doing after two centuries of "civilization." Long's voice is appealing, and readers will have no trouble imagining themselves traveling along with the couple in their fully loaded Subaru. Long and Nichols drove from Montana to the Pacific, checking on Lewis and Clark's natural "discoveries" along the way: prairie dogs, cutthroat trout, sharptail grouse, coyotes, beavers, bison, grizzlies, whitebark pine, even a dinosaur fossil. Everywhere, they encounter another persistent force of nature — human nature. This highly readable travelogue is informed by humor, history, the sacred journals of Lewis and Clark, and the vivid experience of discovery.
- GenresTravelNonfiction
256 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 14, 2011
A very enjoyable read; adequately paced, thought-provoking but not preachy. My favorite part was about hiking to Graves Mountain Lookout, the setting of Norman Maclean's "U.S. Forest Service 1919" - a short story I have read many times and enjoy more than "A River Runs Through It". Here is the excerpt:
"Karen and I left Elk Summit on foot, rambling down a well-groomed trail under a blazing summer sun. Our first two days in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness were pure delight. The trail was gentle, rambling down rocky ridges and leading us through cirques of alpine lakes and glades of alpine larch. Our escape into the wilderness seemed complete. It seemed like a vigorous vacation. Then on day three, things went to hell.
Our trail had kept to the high ground. But at this stage of the hike, we had no choice but to plunge off the open ridgelines and into the timbered canyons. We walked out of the high mountain meadows into a dense land of spruce. The trail dropped three thousand feet in elevation and unraveled like a poorly knit sweater. It was as if the land suddenly resented our presence.
The spruce is a shallow-rooted tree that grows in dense groves to stand upright against the rigors of the mountain climate. This works fine for a century or two. But then, when one spruce falls, they all tend to fall at once. One might think that a falling tree would stand a one-in-four chance of falling across a particular trail. Not so. A windstorm had pushed a full 100 percent of the spruces directly between us and where we wanted to go. I counted two hundred deadfalls - that is, blowdown trees - in a single mile of trail. That's one deadfall, on average, every twenty-six feet.
Spruces are full of sharp, brittle limbs that poke at eyes and grab at backpack straps. Karen and I bowed down and crawled under some logs. We did slow-motion hurdles over others, the sandpaper bark scraping our bare legs. We walked around the larger trees altogether.
We carried a week's worth of supplies in our backpacks. Walking wasn't bad, but the bending and crawling were exhausting. Crawling under a log with a weight of a pack was like doing push-ups with a second- grader on your shoulders. Where there was no deadfall, there was brush. Sitka alder. False huckleberry. Mountain ash. The nightmare stuff grew far over our heads and in a dense tangle under our feet. In places we could see nothing but leaves and stems, not even each other just a few yards apart. We walked hundreds of yards without ever touching the ground, our feet suspended by the springy stems. Walking is an incorrect verb. Bushwhacking is more like swimming. But it is unlike any other form of locomotion. It is more loco than motion.
When there was no brush and no deadfall, there was bog. Black, knee-deep mud coughed up clouds of fresh mosquitoes. We sweated off insect repellent within moments of applying it. To stop for a gulp of water was to invite a mosquito feast.
We followed a faint erasure of the path. This dissolved in a maze of fragmentary trails. None of the fragments showed any signs of official maintenance. The only things keeping the trails open were moose. Moose, by nature, don't give a damn where they're going or when they'll get there. It's all the same woods to them. They have stilts for legs and are unencumbered by deadfall, bog, or brush. So the moose trails crissed and crossed, deep ruts in some places, faint traces in others, leading us only generally in the direction we wanted to go.
The walk was as much a controlled fall as a hike. I heard Karen collapse in a bad spill behind me. She stood up, blood dripping down her shins where rocks had ripped divots from each knee. We bottomed out in the timbered canyon. Shadows grew long and dark, compounded by the depths of the canyon. I had a faint idea that, someday, I was going to have to explain this to a divorce lawyer.
I looked at Karen. Her hair was plastered to her head by sweat. Crushed mosquitoes stuck in bloody splotches on her face. Blood streamed from her wounded knees, mixing with the mud that caked her boots, calves, and shins.
"How are you doing?" I asked.
"How the fuck do you think I'm doing?" she asked. Never one to cork up her emotions. We staggered on.
The gradient mellowed somewhat, but the route was still all a-jumble. I felt myself weaken, tripping like a stumblebum over my own boots. Weariness begets clumsiness. Camp, I thought. We need to pitch camp. I refused to consider that we might be lost. The map made perfect sense - except that there was no trail on the ground to match the dashed line on the paper.
My imagination wandered. What would a twisted ankle or a broken leg mean in this godforsaken hole? If we couldn't walk out, how would anyone find us in this spruce jungle? Who would think to search? No one expected us for a week, and then we had only the foggiest commitments back in civilization. The truck full of firefighters no doubt forgot us as soon as we said good-bye. First things first, I told myself. First, find the damn trail.
As night's shadow began to claim our side of the Earth, we broke into a boggy meadow. The meadow was not large, just big enough to picket a horse or two. At the far end, I saw a large gray form in the shadows. My mind clicked: a canvas wall tent. Someone's base camp. Behind that, I saw movement. Packhorses. All right, I thought, a trail crew. They're here to sort out this mess and reopen the trail. They'll enjoy a little company. They will know the best way out of here and will have the route cleared. It will be smooth hiking from here.
I turned and took four long strides toward the wall tent. Then I stopped. My eyes screwed into focus. The wall tent, as if at some sorcerer's command, materialized into a granite boulder. A glacial erratic, capped with moss. There was no base camp. There was to trail crew or packhorses. I hallucinated the whole thing.
"Ho-lee shit," I whispered. I shrugged out of my pack and let it thump to the ground.
"What?" Karen asked. "What is it?"
"I... uh... I like this meadow. Let's camp here. I think we've hiked far enough for one day."
"I don't know," Karen said, "It's pretty damp. Maybe we'll hit the main trail a little farther down. We still have a little light. Let's keep going."
But I already had the tent out of my pack and was flipping it across the grass. We would have to pitch it fast, as a fortress against the mosquitoes. Karen was too tired to protest. The tent sprouted like a blue mushroom. Karen crawled inside to peel off her muddy socks. I walked to the edge of the meadow. Under a spruce tree, I noticed a place where a bed had made a daybed, probably that afternoon. I could see the scratches in the duff where he had scraped out the sticks to get to the soft earth. It was about fifteen feet from our tent. I shook my head, recalling our sleepless night on Mount Aenaes. I looked around, unzipped my fly, and pissed on the bear bed.
"I lay claim to this little meadow," I said. I zipped up, returned to the tent and peeled off my own muddy socks. We ate a cold dinner of trail mix and dried fruit and water.
"Who were you talking to?" Karen asked.
"No one," I said. I didn't mention the illusory wall tent, either. That could wait until morning.
"Karen and I left Elk Summit on foot, rambling down a well-groomed trail under a blazing summer sun. Our first two days in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness were pure delight. The trail was gentle, rambling down rocky ridges and leading us through cirques of alpine lakes and glades of alpine larch. Our escape into the wilderness seemed complete. It seemed like a vigorous vacation. Then on day three, things went to hell.
Our trail had kept to the high ground. But at this stage of the hike, we had no choice but to plunge off the open ridgelines and into the timbered canyons. We walked out of the high mountain meadows into a dense land of spruce. The trail dropped three thousand feet in elevation and unraveled like a poorly knit sweater. It was as if the land suddenly resented our presence.
The spruce is a shallow-rooted tree that grows in dense groves to stand upright against the rigors of the mountain climate. This works fine for a century or two. But then, when one spruce falls, they all tend to fall at once. One might think that a falling tree would stand a one-in-four chance of falling across a particular trail. Not so. A windstorm had pushed a full 100 percent of the spruces directly between us and where we wanted to go. I counted two hundred deadfalls - that is, blowdown trees - in a single mile of trail. That's one deadfall, on average, every twenty-six feet.
Spruces are full of sharp, brittle limbs that poke at eyes and grab at backpack straps. Karen and I bowed down and crawled under some logs. We did slow-motion hurdles over others, the sandpaper bark scraping our bare legs. We walked around the larger trees altogether.
We carried a week's worth of supplies in our backpacks. Walking wasn't bad, but the bending and crawling were exhausting. Crawling under a log with a weight of a pack was like doing push-ups with a second- grader on your shoulders. Where there was no deadfall, there was brush. Sitka alder. False huckleberry. Mountain ash. The nightmare stuff grew far over our heads and in a dense tangle under our feet. In places we could see nothing but leaves and stems, not even each other just a few yards apart. We walked hundreds of yards without ever touching the ground, our feet suspended by the springy stems. Walking is an incorrect verb. Bushwhacking is more like swimming. But it is unlike any other form of locomotion. It is more loco than motion.
When there was no brush and no deadfall, there was bog. Black, knee-deep mud coughed up clouds of fresh mosquitoes. We sweated off insect repellent within moments of applying it. To stop for a gulp of water was to invite a mosquito feast.
We followed a faint erasure of the path. This dissolved in a maze of fragmentary trails. None of the fragments showed any signs of official maintenance. The only things keeping the trails open were moose. Moose, by nature, don't give a damn where they're going or when they'll get there. It's all the same woods to them. They have stilts for legs and are unencumbered by deadfall, bog, or brush. So the moose trails crissed and crossed, deep ruts in some places, faint traces in others, leading us only generally in the direction we wanted to go.
The walk was as much a controlled fall as a hike. I heard Karen collapse in a bad spill behind me. She stood up, blood dripping down her shins where rocks had ripped divots from each knee. We bottomed out in the timbered canyon. Shadows grew long and dark, compounded by the depths of the canyon. I had a faint idea that, someday, I was going to have to explain this to a divorce lawyer.
I looked at Karen. Her hair was plastered to her head by sweat. Crushed mosquitoes stuck in bloody splotches on her face. Blood streamed from her wounded knees, mixing with the mud that caked her boots, calves, and shins.
"How are you doing?" I asked.
"How the fuck do you think I'm doing?" she asked. Never one to cork up her emotions. We staggered on.
The gradient mellowed somewhat, but the route was still all a-jumble. I felt myself weaken, tripping like a stumblebum over my own boots. Weariness begets clumsiness. Camp, I thought. We need to pitch camp. I refused to consider that we might be lost. The map made perfect sense - except that there was no trail on the ground to match the dashed line on the paper.
My imagination wandered. What would a twisted ankle or a broken leg mean in this godforsaken hole? If we couldn't walk out, how would anyone find us in this spruce jungle? Who would think to search? No one expected us for a week, and then we had only the foggiest commitments back in civilization. The truck full of firefighters no doubt forgot us as soon as we said good-bye. First things first, I told myself. First, find the damn trail.
As night's shadow began to claim our side of the Earth, we broke into a boggy meadow. The meadow was not large, just big enough to picket a horse or two. At the far end, I saw a large gray form in the shadows. My mind clicked: a canvas wall tent. Someone's base camp. Behind that, I saw movement. Packhorses. All right, I thought, a trail crew. They're here to sort out this mess and reopen the trail. They'll enjoy a little company. They will know the best way out of here and will have the route cleared. It will be smooth hiking from here.
I turned and took four long strides toward the wall tent. Then I stopped. My eyes screwed into focus. The wall tent, as if at some sorcerer's command, materialized into a granite boulder. A glacial erratic, capped with moss. There was no base camp. There was to trail crew or packhorses. I hallucinated the whole thing.
"Ho-lee shit," I whispered. I shrugged out of my pack and let it thump to the ground.
"What?" Karen asked. "What is it?"
"I... uh... I like this meadow. Let's camp here. I think we've hiked far enough for one day."
"I don't know," Karen said, "It's pretty damp. Maybe we'll hit the main trail a little farther down. We still have a little light. Let's keep going."
But I already had the tent out of my pack and was flipping it across the grass. We would have to pitch it fast, as a fortress against the mosquitoes. Karen was too tired to protest. The tent sprouted like a blue mushroom. Karen crawled inside to peel off her muddy socks. I walked to the edge of the meadow. Under a spruce tree, I noticed a place where a bed had made a daybed, probably that afternoon. I could see the scratches in the duff where he had scraped out the sticks to get to the soft earth. It was about fifteen feet from our tent. I shook my head, recalling our sleepless night on Mount Aenaes. I looked around, unzipped my fly, and pissed on the bear bed.
"I lay claim to this little meadow," I said. I zipped up, returned to the tent and peeled off my own muddy socks. We ate a cold dinner of trail mix and dried fruit and water.
"Who were you talking to?" Karen asked.
"No one," I said. I didn't mention the illusory wall tent, either. That could wait until morning.
January 19, 2014
This was a present from my son-in-law who had liked it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews