Bridal Veil

Bridalveil Creek Camp, in the Forest Service's own words, is one of Yosemite's best kept secrets.  Being open just three months each year keeps it relatively little used and on few people's agendas. This is the great good fortune for the lucky ones who venture to the site. 

Bridalveil Fall

My own recommendation is that one should plan to arrive in the a.m. and remain until at least the following noon.  Bring along your 18-55 zoom and a 250 telephoto, too.

El Capitan

Why?  A very short walk north brings one to the Bridalveil Fall overlook.  From there you are facing Yosemite Falls and El Capitan across the valley. Below is the Merced River winding past Curry Village. 

Half Dome

Northward, you see the entire Yosemite valley past Half Dome to Tuolumne Meadows in the hazy distance.  The Fire Fall is nearby on your right. Vernal and Nevada Falls decorate the farther right. It is the view that locked John Muir's heart.  Nothing on Earth can cap it.

The camp itself, at least when I was lucky enough to be there, was definitely primitive.  There was a water faucet, a campfire circle, and, um, uh, and a couple of small signs.  Oh, yes, there was a trash can with a lid.  The lid was chained to the can, and the can was chained to a stake anchored in concrete. That should have been enough to warn visitors about the caveat: Protect your food.

I noticed that the few other campers had lashed bags of what looked like food to overhanging branches that were at least eight feet above open ground.  Deer, I thought. 

I should have done a bit more thinking. 

              

I took my sandwiches out of my plastic cooler, tied it to a bag, which I tied to a clothesline, which I flung over a very high branch.  Deer can't leap twelve feet, I thought.

              

Merced River

After spending the entire day along the rim, clicking at the fairy story falls, shooting across the valley, turning to photograph into deep woods up stream, catching the wondrous shifting of cloud formations, trying to snap birds, chipmunks, jays, and wishing I had a recorder, while missing two meals, I finally realized that it was dark.  I needed to eat.

              

A family was spending the early evening at the campfire. They invited me to share thier marshmallows.  I told them what I'd been doing, and they decided to remain until the next afternoon.

I crawled into my sleeping bag around nine, promptly sleeping deeply.  Sometime in the night I became conscious of a clanking. There was no moon, but the clear, starry sky allowed me to make out moving shadows beyond the campfire circle.   A bear was pulling a trash can over.

He was clawing at the secured lid. In moments he had it off.  He promptly stuck his head deep inside. Then his head reappeared.  Apparently, he was too late. The Forest Service had already cleaned out the can. 

              

The bear clawed at the can now resting on its side. He stuck his head inside again.  Shortly, he backed out again. He glared at the can some more, his head swaying.  He turned to walk away, but suddenly whirled and gave the can a resounding whack.  The can bounced the foot or two to the end of its chain tether, clanging loudly. The bear glared still.

              

A second time the bear walked off a few paces, then spun once more, and whacked the can so hard it bounced crazily, losing much of its earlier roundness.  Apparently finally satisfied that he had taught the Forest Service and the can a lesson, he lumbered away.

              

In the morning, I was awakened by some rather colorful language. A male voice was unhappy.  Peering out from my bag, I saw my marshmallow host standing by a branch dangling from a tree.  A piece of string and the remains of a plastic bag rested at the end of the broken branch.

                

A deer must have leaped higher than the man thought he could.  It didn't take rocket science to see that the eight feet was not enough.

              

Mr. “Marshmallow's” wife peered out from their tent.  “Honey,” she said.

              

“I don't want to hear it,” he snapped.

Now Hear This

I had gone to the U.C. Berkeley administration office to apply for part time work. The woman at the desk handed me a questionnaire that inquired into every breath I'd taken from the Battle of Hastings (1066) to Darfur in 2016. The woman smiled as I eventually handed her the compendium. She held it over a basket already high with previous applications, few of which, I assumed, were for the Chancellor's post. 

As she was about to let go, she paused, looking more closely at a part of my application. She looked up at me, and said, “You've done counseling?”

I know, when applying for any position, one is supposed to reply with “I'm working toward a doctorate in regenerative psychology,” or at least “I've mapped the South Pole twice.” Something dramatic like that. But as I turned toward the
office exit, I told the truth.

“Just Y.M.C.A. summer camps and 'Y' club leader stuff.”  I'd never thought of those times before as anything but volunteer fun.

Instead of dropping my packet into the basket, she put it by her phone. She made a call, spoke to someone, and, after a few words, gave me an address.

The next morning between classes I was accepted as a something-or-other (that I never quite figured out) at the California School for the Deaf. I was about to spend two semesters discovering a world I'd barely knew existed.

After a short interview, I had a room about half a mile from the campus, three meals a day, enough income to wash my clothes, buy books, and attend a couple of proms. I could even take the “Big Red” electric car to San Francisco once in awhile. My parents liked that.

Two other fellows shared my quarters and tasks. Both were pleasant and interesting. Neither was a sociology or psychology major. They came from “The East,” meaning one was from Nebraska, the other from Chicago. (Later, he explained that his home was really Elmhurst; but hardly anybody knew anything about Elmhurst, or any of the rest of Illinois, either). Both were bewildered that a human being would select English literature as a major, particularly when they found that I had to learn some Middle English, which only barely resembles modern speech. I'd gotten used to that by then, and they didn't push it.

Working with the deaf students was fun and more than enlightening. I soon realized that I actually had had some valuable experience that contributed to working reasonably well with these young people. I was more comfortable with the deaf students than my roommates were. As ignorant as I was, the secretary had had good reason to yank my name back from oblivion.

Our duties were routine and typical, mostly being available for keeping order during recesses and physical education classes. As the students began to feel comfortable with me, they included me rather naturally in their activities. They took special smug pleasure in making me learn the rules of the games THEIR way. Also, I became their de facto umpire. That was because the staff -- half of them also hard of hearing -- were generally much stricter than I. They were really nice people, both the men and women, but negotiating was not built in to their protocols. When a child's complaint came to them, they made instant, irrevocable decisions. With me, it always took a while to find out what the squabble or complaint was really about By the time I began to filter through their Kabuki dances, the heat had already expended itself, and my decisions were less threatening or frustrating.

It wasn't my genius: Often, it was my ignorance of ASL. Sometimes, the student problem devolved into a lesson in what their gestures meant. I suspect that that their anger was often burned out by their violently waving a visual language that was 85% Greek to me. What I did know was that they usually left no longer frantically doing all those crazy things with their fingers.

My name, I eventually learned, was drawing the right forefinger across the left side of the chin. When I asked a teacher why that motion, she said, “Oh, the violin.” But, of course! I mean, I should have figured that out: Singer =violin. You knew that, too, didn't you?

The school had a remarkable program, especially in socializing the students. For example, there were monthly dances -- with recordings. Apparently, most people, however limited in hearing, do get the deep bass tones. Introductory notes would be flashed in sync with the record intro by a hearing person, and the dancers would pick up the beats from there.

There wasn't much “Jitterbug,” and most of them somewhat dragged their feet. But it worked. Few students elected to miss the dances, and the girls saved their best and most decorated sweaters for those nights. When one of the directors learned that I knew most of the steps, she had us put on a show for the students. It helped with my approval rating, too, I expect. Afterward, the director had me teach other staff folk. 

The adult staff had a real problem with something that wouldn't have entered my mind -- noise.

Evenings, after “lights out,” some of the teen students would rap on exposed pipes, heaters, and almost any fixed metal device. Pipes were the favorite because striking them echoed throughout the building. We college three, lodged in the basement, could hear all of it. We could tell when some boy had hammered something then leaped into bed to pretend sleep. We also always knew when a boy, or group of them, had been caught. The next day, the girls would be giggling and pointing.

Sometimes I wonder how that place is functioning now. Electrical science, understanding of the brain, social psychology, and the knowledge of language have advanced so far from those days..
But, I bet teen boys still beat on pipes.

Note: The original California School for the Deaf building where I worked was condemned, and there are now at least two campuses: one in Fremont, California, and another in Riverside. Actually, the structure I bunked in was coming apart then.

The Missing Door

People who sign on to creative enterprises really are unlike the rest of us. I mean, what kind of brain builds a box with a button on top that has exactly one function:  When you press the button, the lid opens, a hand curls out, and it presses the button, turning itself off?

An acquaintance worked at a think tank.  Not the kind you usually expect, where a crew is hired to study political problems and offer solutions and subterfuges, but a real think tank. This company took on technical computer related asks.  Tricky problems like how do you thread a nut around a bolt that is inside a container with no access?  This fellow explained it to me.  It looked like it could work.  I just don’t know if his company actually had that problem, or if he was pulling my leg.  Because he and his coworkers routinely pulled practical jokes on each other.

One fellow quit answering his office phone because each time he lifted the receiver, a Souza march blared in the hall.

One of their members was called to D.C. to report to a committee on a space related project.  It took him away from Pasadena for about a week.  While he was gone, a painting crew repainted the plant’s halls.

Soooooooooooo, his “buddies” arranged for his office door to be papered over, and the painters to paint that, too.  When he returned from DC, his co workers had no idea where his office had been moved to.

Another fellow, driving toward home from the office, found that his horn tooted through every left turn.

And, when my acquaintance retired, he refused to go anywhere near the plant.  Anyone who wanted to see him had to go to his home.

The mechanical hand? When the inventor figured out how much it cost him to make it, almost everyone in the plant bought one.

Ship to Okinawa

My return-to-duty orders, after a leave, named a ship to get to without suggesting where it might be.  After considerable leg work, I learned that it was somewhere in the China Seas, sort of, which was at least better than “the Western Hemisphere,” or “yonder.”

I grabbed the first available Navy vessel that was crossing the International Dateline.  It happened to be a converted cruise ship with every contemporary appointment. It moved at a steady 35 knots but quietly and smoothly, its huge engines barely audible.  After my service aboard a ship that labored at speeds exceeding ten knots, and got from here to there by beating waves aside, this was pretty cushy.  It was aimed toward Okinawa, much closer to the China Seas than San Diego.

Having spent almost all of my Navy career aboard a vessel that echoed every wavelet, invited  the softest breeze to sprinkle foam over onto even the ensign, slithering drunkenly in dead calms,  and looked as if it had been assembled by a kid working on Legos, this smooth flowing 700 foot, streamlined bit of snobbery was practically shore duty. 

The Pacific, however, covers nearly half the Earth.  Wind blowing across it has plenty of room and time to develop green hills (make that “mountains”), lifting and tilting even this beauty halfway to heaven. As we entered the higher latitudes, even this luxury liner performed like a gymnast on a pommel horse.  I was almost on my LCT again. 

Which brings me to what makes the Navy the Navy --- coffee.  In the Navy you drink coffee only under the following necessities -- shift breaks, that is at 0800, 1200, 1600, 2000, 2400, 0200, 0400, and 0600 hours.  Whether you are going on duty, or ending it, heading forward or aft, working in the engine room or aloft, the Navy manual requires that you consume whatever scalding black liquid is available.  Every ship is equipped with a minimum of 28 mugs per bluejacket.

This made-over troop ship knew the Navy rules.   

One evening, with the seas running about thirty feet, a number of us were casually sort of playing cards, sort of conversing, not bothering to talk about home, and putting away coffee.

In good old Navy style, mugs were piling up on the cafeteria rail -- several trays of them. Then came an unusually hefty swell.  The cruise ship stuck its bow toward Arcturus for a moment, leaned slightly to starboard, promptly bucked its stern in the general direction of Cuzco,  shuddered momentarily, performed a  slow dance, and liked its own choreography so much it repeated the maneuvers.

None of this would have drawn any attention, except that the trays of mugs on the rails opted to join the dance.  With clattering joy, the loaded trays sprinted first toward one end of the rails, then back toward the other.

One of the card players said, “Uh-oh.”  The young man collecting mugs from tables cried, “Hey, ho!” and launched himself toward a double stack of mugs slithering sneakily toward a rail end.

Grabbing the rail with one hand, he yanked himself toward the rail end.  His free hand snapped to the end of the tracks.  The double tier of mugs was stopped.

At once, the coffee drinkers rose to applaud.

“That was GREAT!”  a voice called out.  The young man straightened up.  Grinning, he clicked his heels, gave a thumbs up, and bowed deeply... as the ship tilted some more, and the double tray shot off the railing behind him.  He launched himself in a fine, flat dive. A foot or so before the lead stack reached the end, he got his fingers on it and checked it just in time.

His audience applauded. The young man grinned, stood straight, and bowed deeply to even more applause.  As the applause left off, the next huge swell lifted the ship again, the room tilted again, and the two stacks of mugs completed their slither on behind the young man's back. The crash was worthy of the number of mugs.

From the far side of the room a voice said, “Wow! Do that again!”

Plastiline

One evening, idling through the local newspaper, an item about adult extension classes caught my attention. A sculpting class at the nearby school was offered. I put the paper down, had a coffee, picked up the paper again, folded it so the article was up, put it on the dining room table, finished my coffee, and finally read the day, time, and room number.

I'd sculpted something once. At Cal State, in an education class, I'd had to make something in clay. I'd rolled some clay into a ball, slammed it on the table so it couldn't roll around, and punched holes in it with a pencil. I'd named it “Pencil Holder.”  The instructor had said, “Well, it's different.”

In my typical, dilatory manner, I kept passing the newspaper clipping on the table. Reading the piece one more time, I noted that the class time was Thursday evenings. 

 

Several people were at the classroom door when I arrived. Most of them were women in their fifties or so, all matronly. I had no idea what a sculptor was supposed to look like; but these people seemed to know the teacher and found him attractive.  I thought – Frenchman, no, not named Nishan Something. Greek?  Tall and suave, anyway.

The several women were all affable, dressed to accommodate smeary stuff. I felt quite clever, having come in jeans. One asked if I was aware that our instructor was the "great" Nishan. I said no, and let it go at that.  “We're so lucky!” the woman added.

           

I smiled. Anyone in this southern California middle class community named “Nishan” and teaching sculpture to middle aged housewives (and me) probably had a wild hairdo, an undecipherable accent, and a long mustache. I began to wonder what other “interests” had been in that newspaper article.

Right on schedule, the classroom door was unlocked by a small, slender man of retirement age clad in a gray coverall. He had neither mustache nor beard.  The cluster of several middle aged women and one male trailed into the room after him, chose work benches, and picked up a sheet from the bench. The sheet was a list of required materials, which I pocketed then waited for the introductory remarks. 

There were none.  A woman asked him a question I did not hear.  His response was, “Yes.”

           

Another woman asked him how much clay she should buy.  He said, “Ten pounds.” He passed around a registration sheet and then said, “A model will come next Thursday.  Thank you.”  He smiled and left.  The intro night was over.

At home I almost tossed out the info sheet; but, holding it above the waste basket, my eye caught an odd word: plastiline.  What did that have to do with sculpting, whatever it was?  I put the sheet back in my pocket.

Plastiline, it turned out, is what is used instead of real clay.  It's dust free, doesn't crumble, lasts indefinitely, and washes off the hands easily.  WOW!  Suddenly, I knew I was returning to the class.  Worst case would be, if I quit the class, I could give this plastiline whatever to another student.

The next Thursday the other pre-sculptors welcomed me, obviously somewhat surprised that I'd returned. One said, “I think you'll like him after all. He's famous, you know.”

No, I didn't.  But then the number of sculptors I was familiar with totaled two: one Frenchman and one Italian.  This Nishan was neither. But I was here with ten pounds of plastiline, the few required tools, and a woman was sitting on a high stool in the center of the room.

The rest of the class was punching plastiline.  If they were, I figured I should, too. Nishan walked very slowly around behind the dozen sculpting people.  When he got to me, he peered over my shoulder, then spoke.

           

“Bad light,” he whispered. He pointed to another part of the room. I moved. He smiled.  That was the sum of the instruction I got for a month.  He must have exhausted his vocabulary.

 

Then, as I poked and rubbed at the blob I was trying to make into a facsimile of the model, he leaned over my shoulder and said softly, “Looks like a man.” He was right, and I already knew it. I turned toward him. He added, almost in a whisper, “All week look at women.” His face lit up in a huge grin. “She'll be beautiful next week,” he murmured.

I don't know what I'd been doing wrong, but the next Thursday the model had undergone a subtle transformation. And I fell in love with plastiline. It let me change anything and everything.  I could see this thing on my table morph into the model. The others in the class began passing behind me, pausing to look.

Finally, the model's time was used up.  We were all done, or nearly so.  When the model came over, she gazed at her facsimile for a long moment.  Then she smiled and said, “Thank you.”  My semester was made.

In the entire semester this Nishan hadn't spoken ten words to me, or fifty to the class. But, when, one day in Paris, I stood before Rodin's “The Kiss,” I understood.

Nishan Toor (1880 – 1966)   http://nishantoor.com/

http://www.sullivangoss.com/nishan_toor/

Promises

Promises should be kept.  I know that and try to keep them, but not always successfully. I wish I could make up for some.

  

In the heart of Seville is a pedestrian square with no special appearance.  It must have a name, but city maps don't show one.  Weekdays it is the most ordinary of semi-business centers.   Nondescript offices surround a plain, undecorated area. A church dominates the north facade.  No benches, no flowered islands, no monument, not even signs or billboards.

One expects, in Spain, never to be out of sight of a floral bed, or decoration, but here is none.  Without the church, this square would be the dullest spot in Seville.

Except on Sunday.

Sunday is for “La Sevillana.” For an hour or two any person or family can reach back four centuries, for free, into the pinnacle of Spain's most romantic period.

It isn't advertised.  No billboards, nothing in the papers, on radio or T.V.  The only setup is that the church clears its staircase and front deck.  This is for the convenience of free bands that alternate during that day. Bands arrange with somebody to show up on some schedule. They must make agreements with some authority some place, because they never play anything but “Sevillana” period pieces that include Flamenco and other three-century-old folkdance pieces.

The square has few, but essential, qualities for “La Sevillana.” They are (1) Size: There is space for hundreds of participants; (2) Protection:  Buildings surround the square, blocking any severe wind; (3) Flat:  It is slightly tilted, but the pavement block surface is smooth.  (4) No stands or benches.  If you enter the square, you are in the midst of the dancers.

Spaniards do almost nothing without sprays of flowers distributed everywhere, on their persons, decorating everything they can reach.  But this square is as plain as cold soup ---  until Sunday. Then it is not the square, but people who turn it into something wonderful.

My first visit began in a desultory manner.  Somebody had told me that a Yankee should not miss “La Sevillana.” I wasn't told what it was, just to be at the square shortly before church let out. When I arrived, all there was to observe were a few people assembling folding chairs on the church veranda.  No signs, no bunting, nothing.

Well, not quite nothing.  Several college age persons were placing some coats in a sort of circle here and there.  A Franco guard leaned sleepily against a street sign.  A priest peered out through  a window. After a time, a few musicians went up the church stairway that faced the square.  The musicians, of disparate ages and garb, some about twenty, some clearly pushing retirement, carried instruments up the stairs.  They warmed up a little; but there was still nothing dramatic. What conversation I could decipher was trivial.

Then a fellow with rather wild hair raised his hands high, held them up for a moment.  Something was about to begin.

I heard a sort of “Ahhh,” behind me.  I turned around. Somehow, silently, the square had filled.  At least a thousand people, folks of every age and description, had melted into the square prepared to dance.  Clusters of teenagers, clusters of adults, all mixed with the very old and very young, had laid out markers with their coats, jackets, handbags, radios, even occasional hats. No one invaded a single claim.  Some people had brought folding chairs; but those turned out to be for older, non dancers.

Some dancers were paired, but most had arrived singly for the dance, pairing up with whomever was hand, and generally re-pairing later. They would find a partner, young or old, decked out or not.  The dance was why they had come.

The largest circles maxed at twelve persons.   Four was the minimum.  Many wore period costumes, but that was obviously optional. Nearly every girl below high school age, though, was elegantly decked out, mostly in the ubiquitous “fandango” style with the great comb that stacks hair high. Costumes overall varied from Twentieth Century to Medieval.

Nearly every adult knew the steps of every tune. I created the "nearly."  As dancers pirouetted in the flowing circles, there was an obvious rule -- you smiled your best smile at every eye you caught.  Since that meant me, too, I quickly felt very Carlovian Spanish.

              

Circles swelled and shrank, as a couple drifted from one circle to another.  (But not me, of course.  They knew not to invite me).  I got big smiles, though, of sympathy mostly.

              

This being Spain, when I held my hands out, palms up, they laughed.  A few volunteered to show me at least some basic steps.  One woman peeled off her elbow length gloves, grabbed my wrists, and towed me into her circle and through some maneuvers that had to have been from the Sevillana years. She didn't mind that I remained a half beat behind each maneuver. The rest of our circle cheered. 

There were no breaks in the music.  How the second band arrived, I didn't see.  I only realized that there were two when a fellow from the first band came down the church steps to join a young woman in a larger circle.

I'd been happily clicking away with my camera for some time when I felt a tug at my elbow.  Turning, there was a nicely dressed man in a Nineteenth Century style dinner suit, a “gentleman,” smiling and pointing to my camera.

“Por favor?” he asked in a soft voice.  He pointed to the girl beside him, whom he had been lovingly teaching.

The girl, at most ten, obviously his granddaughter, as pretty as a ten year old could be, was also delighted that her grandfather would want their picture taken together with her in her  beautiful period costume.

I had them stand together.  They beamed. I shot twice.  He wrote out his address, which I slipped into my camera case.

Sadly, my travels after Seville, to Portugal, more Spain, France, Holland, and London, required much handling of the camera case.  Somewhere, the gentleman's address slipped out.

That charming gentleman has long since departed, and his grandchild is almost surely, now, a grandmother.  I hope they didn't really mind that I did not keep my promise.

Clatsop

It would be lots easier for kids if primary and elementary teachers realized NOT that kids don't know anything, but that kids know tons of stuff that's mostly wrong.




When my teacher introduced Lewis and Clark in my sixth grade, I already “knew” everything necessary about Indians. They could look like trees and be invisible. They must live with eagles so they could wear colored feathers.  They wore moccasins with beads imported from China. When I asked my teacher how Indians got birch bark for their canoes when there were hardly any trees on the prairie, she told me to sit down. 

One kid in my class kept confusing Sacajawea with Pocahantas, which made me feel better about being told to sit down. Today, I am most astonished that the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Corps of Discovery) is assigned so far down the list of amazing American achievements. 

Having driven the entire route of the Expedition from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Fort Clatsop, Oregon, it is mind boggling that 35 men who didn't know what they were getting into, how long their journey would take, or if they could even put up with each other -- and knew less about Indians than I did as a kid -- not only pulled it off, but every single member of the expedition returned in one piece.  (Special biographies today note that some members of the expedition suffered desperately afterward. But that was afterward.) 

People really should know that the Mandan Indians, who helped the Corps of Discovery, affected our history far more than did John Wayne. The expedition spent the first winter along the banks of the upper Missouri River in the territory of the Mandan Indians. When the Corps of Discovery entered their world in October 1804, the Mandans informed the men of the best routes to The Great Divide, supplied them with food throughout the winter, invited them on a buffalo hunt, warned them of the Blackfeet, and accepted the expedition’s doodads in payment.  The party knew where to go, what to avoid, and how to manage the seasons.

Fort Clatsop, at the end of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, is among historic sites too little appreciated. It should be on a par with Gettysburg and way above the Alamo. You probably won't visit it, but you should.  One doesn't pause at Clatsop en route to Mt. Rainier and St. Helens, etc.  You have to elect to go there.  It's tucked against the south shore of the Colombia River just before that great river flows into the Pacific. It is in dense woods at the south edge of the world's greatest temperate rain forest. The river is so wide there that you cannot see the far shore. 
Getting to Clatsop, you won't pass huge signs saying “Gas: Next Exit.” It's lonely. In fact, your first impression will be that you probably lost your way. 

Approaching the site, you might think "What's the big deal?"  A shabby log cabin, an axe shaped canoe, all in a quiet created by dense greenery and an occasional bird.  Also, perpetually soggy footing.   

Supply room

When you realize that, on the north (Washington) shore were hundreds of very unfriendly Indians whose only experience with white people had been being cheated and bullied by John Jacob Astor's merchant ships, it is understandable that these Lewis and Clark men, with a few muzzle loaders, barely able to feed on deer and fish, should select a camp spot well out of view from river travelers.

Dugout Canoe

The Clatsop Indians aided the Corps both in preparing for and dealing with the Northwest winter. They informed Lewis and Clark that there was a good amount of elk on the south side of the Columbia, information that influenced the Corps to build Fort Clatsop where they did. When the expedition’s food supplies were running low, the Clatsops informed the Corps that a whale had washed ashore some miles to the south.

The structure of the fort is quite typical of the thousands of prairie homes built during the next thirty years by Midwest pioneers. It isn't Versailles. However, as Dr. Leakey explained about the fossilized cranium of Zinjanthropus:  the wonder isn't that it's not pretty, but that thirty-five men, a girl, and her baby got there.
 
The number of non-Indians who knew anything about the huge region that later became more than half of this country, or even knew their ways through the Louisiana Purchase, was maybe twelve, and they were just about all Canadians. The survival of the Corps of Discovery expedition was a miracle. 

At Fort Clatsop, the “office,” constructed by axe, reveals the professional skills that the men had developed with a tool never designed for carpentry. How much can anyone do with axes and some nearby gunk? 

Live demonstrations at the Fort

In recent years during the tourist season, Fort Clatsop National Historical Park offers live demonstrations of how the men coped with the forest primeval.  The cabin that served as an office has been authentically reproduced according to Lewis' records. There are also demonstrations of how the men used their smooth bore muzzle loaders, and how logs were shaped into canoes. (Rifling did not come into use until around 1812.) This visit will probably inspire you to take a river cruise that includes the Snake River and to see how Lewis and Clark worked their way from the Clark River through the white rapids, via the Snake, to the Columbia.  My impulse on leaving Clatsop was, and continues to be, to retrace the route up the Missouri, along the Yellowstone, the Madison, across The Great Divide, and to marvel again how superbly the best in human character was carried out through two years. Also, how remarkably loyal the crew was. 

P.S.     A huge rock in the center of the Columbia River is named for Sacajawea's boy, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.  He seems to have had 35 uncles.