PERSONAL DISCOVERIES
Most Americans have seen the central regions of their country only from 30,000 feet out the window of commercial jets, or through the car window as they sped along interstate highways. The Lewis and Clark route, however, like the old Indian trails, follows the contours of the land. Tourists have rarely been drawn up the Missouri River to North and South Dakota, but that is changing. Today, people want to come into the country the way the captains did: slowly, upriver, moving out of the humid east and across the vast western landscape of open sky and few fences.[4] The prairie states are delighted with this newfound tourist desire, and momentum for the bicentennial is resulting in everything from new visitor centers to extra motel rooms along the route. On the western edge of the continent, traveling on the Columbia River is more developed and luxurious than in the Dakotas. Yet in both parts of the continent, river travel is a new medium for most Americans and is growing in popularity thanks to the newfound excitement about Lewis and Clark.
Travelers following the Corps of Discovery are not arriving at a single tourist destination; instead they are encountering an entirely new landscape not visible from jets or four-lane highways. The entire route has its appeal and no one particular historic campsite, mountain ridge, or museum visitor center can claim to be the tourist nexus. Just as the explorers had not completed their journey until they had arrived back home, this commemoration is about crossing America—by river, trail, and back roads—and returning with new understanding. Following the captains’ route is a personal voyage of discovery, a tourist odyssey linking landscape and history as described by the Lewis and Clark journals.
Walking down the main street of Three Forks, Montana, after rocking on the porch of the Sacagawea Inn, provides a special delight for suburban tourists who may never have experienced a western barbecue cooked in an
Four things the captains had in a bundance that we have lost in the twenty-first century are silence, solitude, darkness, and proximity to mammals like wolves and grizzlies. These qualities of the wilderness landscape are unknown in subdivisions and on city streets. Nevertheless, the words of T. K. Whipple from Study Out the Land still apply to the Corps of Discovery as well as to the legions of tourists traveling the Lewis and Clark trail: “All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.”[5]
Lewis and Clark tourists reawaken their senses on the plains of eastern Montana, on the Weippe Prairie of Idaho, and on open riverboats at the Missouri River's Gates of the Mountains near Helena, Montana. There travelers can visit Meriwether Campground and view the Joe and Reuben Fields Gulch where the expedition stayed on 19 July 1805.[6] For many suburban visitors to the West, just seeing an uncluttered starry sky makes the trip worthwhile. For others, following the Lewis and Clark trail is both a historical pilgrimage and a personal spiritual quest.[7]
Lewis and Clark in their buckskin shirts and with their hunting rifles symbolize a freedom and independence unknown in modern America. They represent an irresistible draw for the young who want to follow in Lewis and Clark's footsteps and learn about the landscape as they learn about themselves. For senior citizens it is also a journey about youth and self-discovery. Sitting around a campfire at the Triple O Hunting Camp deep in Idaho's Bitterroot Range, a woman from Rhode Island more accustomed to cocktails and card parties explains after a week of rafting, hiking, and horseback riding along the trail, “I never knew I could do these things. My friends told me I was a fool to come. Now I know that they are the fools. Why have I limited my life? I was ready to lie down and retire and snooze away my afternoons. Not now. Not ever. I hurt. I’m sore, but I’m stronger than I've ever been.”[8]
A widow from Baton Rouge, Louisiana stares into the fire and says, “I've never been so free. The kids are grown. I’m on my own. All my life I've wanted to follow Lewis and Clark and see these woods. This journey has