Just Thinkin’-
Lewis and Clark and Chouteau,
The celebration of our nation’s 250th birthday has brought forth a bushel of patriotic themed television programing.
I greatly enjoy U.S. History. I have found most of the programming to be pleasant and educational.
This past Sunday morning Meet the Press had Historian Doris Kerns Goodwin, documentarian Ken Burns and Secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie Bunch III as their guests. I watched and listened. Their facts were solid. They are such skilled and credible communicators. I’m sure each has their own point of view. Most of us do.
And so, our 250th Independence Day passed. The time was filled with glimpses into our past. I wondered where do people acquire all these patriotic beliefs and emotions?
My answer, We learn them. Logic dictates our family was our first teacher. Then, we begin to acquire a collection of “facts” as we progress through our formal education.
Simultaneously we are teaching ourselves, learning from our personal experience. I was about 11 years old when my Aunt Vivian bought me a paperback novel on Lewis and Clark. I read it and read it again. I was hooked.
The idea of the Corps of Discovery thrilled every bone in my body. Going out into uncharted wilderness with no idea where you’re going. You encounter mountains higher than they had ever seen and yet they kept going. As I have done with many things in my life, I asked myself, “Could I have done that?” The answer was almost always “clearly no.”
Yet the journals of Lewis and Clark, of some of their men, are filled with the commonplace. The taste of food, the humidity as well as incredible swarms of enormous mosquitoes.
I sat on the bank of Snake Creek and watched the muddy water flow toward the Canadian River. Did some early “Corps of Discovery” make their way up some southern river? Why not? My book told me Lewis and Clark met the French trapper and trader, Charbonneau while they wintered in the Mandan villages in present day North Dakota. Where did that Frenchman come from? How long had he been there?
It was in John Harmon’s Oklahoma History Class that I first learned of Auguste Piierre Chouteau, his passage through the Three Forks area of the Arkansas River, and his trading post.
A can of Coke, a solo cup with a few cubes of ice, and a few peanuts and I’m ready to explore my back yard. From my perch on the porch, I tossed a few peanuts into the yard. The wind blows them back closer to the porch than I had intended. A cautious squirrel eyes the peanuts for a while. Plan made, he races into the unknown. He snatches a peanut and scurries to safety. Smart squirrel.
Sir Edmund Hillary summit Mount Everest and made himself a hero to my generation. He said, “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” The squirrel figured it out.
I have never been lost, but I admit to being confused for several weeks. – Daniel Boone
