Saturday, November 05, 2005
The American West and the Lewis & Clark Expedition
"PILLAR ROCK, Wash. -- Ocian in view! O! the joy." William Clark, who scribbled these words in his field journal on Nov. 7, 1805, was not a man to get carried away with exclamation points. He was a woodsman, a waterman and a sober-minded maker of maps." As I read Blaine Hardin's great article "Lewis & Clark Mapped it - And then the Nation Remade the West" in the Washington Post, I thought of my own feeling of wonderment when I arrived in San Francisco about 35 years ago. It was not the west that members of Lewis & Clark expedition saw but my travels through the western states created a feeling of love and respect for the land which has not diminished over the years. The vibrancy, the natural splendors--from rugged high desert to lush valleys--make the west incomparable and I am fortunate to be a part of it.
"Go West, young man, and grow up with the country."
Thus wrote John B. Soule in the Terre Haute Express in 1851 although the quotation is attributed by some to Horace Greeley.
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