Columbia River, cruising east

What was Thomas Jefferson thinking when he sent the Corps of Discovery to find a navigable water route to facilitate American commerce along a string of rivers from the Atlantic to the Pacific?

This is what some of us wondered as we set out on our own voyage of discovery on a large, wide river. Jefferson, we learned, loved, studied, and respected rivers from his own Rivanna in Virginia, to the Potomac, to the Missouri and the Mississippi. Today was our river day. We, however, did not have to search for navigable waters. Our journey today was in a sense backwards, as we were heading east, Lewis and Clark’s route home. BUT, what a coincidence, in 1805 they reached the Columbia at precisely the same time of year as we: October. We are here exactly 205 years later!

Poised between the state of Washington to port and Oregon to starboard, we enjoyed brilliant sunshine and an entire day on the water. More precisely, the sun was visible except for the time spent deep inside the locks, where we were lifted higher and higher into a different terrain, from the green landscape where we began the day to higher, desert-hued canyons. Locks and dams are not of Jefferson’s time, but the mechanical genius behind them seems Jeffersonian in spirit. Historians Junius Rochester and Barbara Oberg began the day with the presentation “Lewis and Clark: Before and After,” which laid the groundwork for the days ahead.

Throughout the day, Naturalist Linda Burback would focus us on the natural world, telling us exactly when the binoculars could come forth. Looking out to port or starboard (“look off the bow at 2:00 to your starboard,” she would call to us) we saw gulls, herons, cormorants, and mule deer. And she also told us how to interpret the signs we saw alongside the river - tracks, prints, and scat. Everything tells a story; and we are learning to pay attention to all the stories - of rivers, wildlife, rock formations and peoples. Not a single people, but peoples.

On October 1, 1805, Clark records in his journal that there was “nothing to eate except a little dried fish.” Here 205 years later, we looked out upon the wine industry of Oregon and Washington, an industry Thomas Jefferson had longed for. And we, today’s travelers on the Columbia River, savored the fruits of that industry and had “much to eate.”