Clearwater and Snake Rivers
We began our adventures under a partly cloudy sky with a balmy 51 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a warmly agreeable feeling after the chill of yesterday’s sail up the Columbia. As we had filled our traveling companions with information during the day yesterday, we were now prepared to launch out into expeditions off the Sea Lion. One group went up the Snake River by jetboat. These are fast; roaring, shallow-draft skiffs which hold up to thirty at a time under a protective roof and with large glass windows to the sides. The lower reach of Hell’s Canyon was the destination, and the further upriver the jetboat went, the narrower the canyon walls of basalt layers. After a while even summer homes along the banks were left behind and the loneliness and grandeur of inaccessibility became apparent.
Others went up the Clearwater River, as yet untouched by dams and human manipulation, so it looked very much as it did (we believe) as when Lewis and Clark with their Corps of Discovery came paddling down the river in the fall of 1805, and made their way on horseback up, in the spring of 1806. With Lin Laughy leading us along, readings from the journals came alive. We walked where possibly the Corps of Discovery had camped, to the best of Lin’s knowledge and analysis of the journals could tell. A master storyteller, Lin recounted Native American legends as well, for the Nez Perce creation stories come out of the very rocks and hills we visited today. Very few of us know what it is like to have one’s ancestry under foot, literally. Very few of us walk where our great-great-great-parents walked, sat, and lived.
Our final destination was the Nez Perce Historical Park where we came to understand just a little bit more of what it meant to them to participate in the arrival of the first westerners to their land.
We began our adventures under a partly cloudy sky with a balmy 51 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a warmly agreeable feeling after the chill of yesterday’s sail up the Columbia. As we had filled our traveling companions with information during the day yesterday, we were now prepared to launch out into expeditions off the Sea Lion. One group went up the Snake River by jetboat. These are fast; roaring, shallow-draft skiffs which hold up to thirty at a time under a protective roof and with large glass windows to the sides. The lower reach of Hell’s Canyon was the destination, and the further upriver the jetboat went, the narrower the canyon walls of basalt layers. After a while even summer homes along the banks were left behind and the loneliness and grandeur of inaccessibility became apparent.
Others went up the Clearwater River, as yet untouched by dams and human manipulation, so it looked very much as it did (we believe) as when Lewis and Clark with their Corps of Discovery came paddling down the river in the fall of 1805, and made their way on horseback up, in the spring of 1806. With Lin Laughy leading us along, readings from the journals came alive. We walked where possibly the Corps of Discovery had camped, to the best of Lin’s knowledge and analysis of the journals could tell. A master storyteller, Lin recounted Native American legends as well, for the Nez Perce creation stories come out of the very rocks and hills we visited today. Very few of us know what it is like to have one’s ancestry under foot, literally. Very few of us walk where our great-great-great-parents walked, sat, and lived.
Our final destination was the Nez Perce Historical Park where we came to understand just a little bit more of what it meant to them to participate in the arrival of the first westerners to their land.
