Reading by flashlight at the bus stop.

It’s nice to walk home before the sun has finished setting, but this time of year always has me yearning for a little more light in the morning so that I can read at the bus stop. It’s true that I pulled out my keychain flashlight this morning so that I could read The Lifted Veil, which sounds like it would have worked better than it actually did. But when you hit a passage like this, it makes the sniggering of pre-teens on their way to the gifted school fade away:

My father was called away before he had finished his sentence, and he left my mind resting on the word Prague, with a strange sense that a new and wondrous scene was breaking upon me: a city under the broad sunshine, that seemed to me as if it were the summer sunshine of a long-past century arrested in its course – unrefreshed for ages by the dews of night, or the rushing rain-cloud; scorching the dusty, weary, time-eaten grandeur of a people doomed to live on in the stale repetition of memories, like deposed and superannuated kings in their regal gold-inwoven tatters. The city looked so thirsty that the broad river seemed to me a sheet of metal; and the blacked statues, as I passed under their blank gaze, along the unending bridge, with their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me the real inhabitants and owners of this place, while the busy, trivial men and women, hurrying to and fro, were a swarm of ephemeral visitants infesting it for a day. It is such grim, stony beings as these, I thought, who are the fathers of ancient faded children, and in those tanned time-fretted dwellings that crowd the steep before me; who pay their court in the worn and crumbling pomp of the palace which stretches its monotonous length on the height, who worship wearily in the stifling air of the churches, urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their doom to be ever old and undying, to live on in the rigidity of habit, as they live on in perpetual mid-day, without the repose of night or the new birth of morning.

Sometimes Calgary can feel like that. When you are standing in the dark, waiting for the bus that will take you to work, sometimes it can feel as though the city is standing over us all…

…and then the sun comes up, and the sky lightens, and you feel you’ve broken free of the pause. But reading that bit in the book made me shiver just a bit, and not because it was cold. Gothic stories in the early morning, read by flashlight at the bus stop as the cars whiz by…well, they can do that.

Lewis turns 31.

And has some existential ‘what have I been doing with my life’ angst, I think…though, really – who hasn’t felt like this on a birthday?

August 18, 1805: This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.—

Lewis has nothing to say about the birthday occasion.

I’ve read through about half of the journals – it’s taking me a bit longer than I’d anticipated…partly because they’re fascinating, but the language is a bit harder to parse, what with the, um, creative spelling. But mostly because they’re fascinating. I feel like such a voyeur.

They’re being chased by bears almost daily, and I’m given to think that it’s because they’re hauling fresh meat with them (they’re forever killing buffalo and eating them) and dressing the skins for clothing. I can’t see how they wouldn’t be chased by bears, frankly. Sergeant Pryor keeps dislocating his shoulder, Lewis gets bitten by something and develops a ‘tumor’ (an abscess, I think, or a boil), Clark’s feet get terribly blistered and he suffers what I suspect is a rather crippling bout of constipation – he remarks that he’s had no ‘passages,’ and since they seem to be eating nothing but meat…well, it’s hardly a surprise. Lewis is quite concerned and urges Clark to bathe his feet and legs in warm water (?) and eventually Clark…er, recovers.

People keep falling out boats, they’re caught in a dreadful hailstorm, Sacagawea gets sick (but recovers), and Lewis tries to build a skin boat but discovers that punching holes in the skins to sew them together makes for a leaky boat. The experience, writes Lewis, ‘mortifyed me not a little.’ The men keep having to repair their ‘mockersons’ (I love saying that), and Lewis complains, in August, that the mornings are so cold that the ink ‘freizes’ in his pen.

These little observations – complaints about people grumbling, worries about supplies, the various ailments and injuries – are more fascinating to me than the actual journey itself. I’m not sure why. But it’s what I’m drawn to as I’m reading.

More Lewis and Clark.

The differences in writing style between Clark and Lewis are becoming more pronounced.

Lewis:

June 23, 1805: this evening the men repaired their mockersons, and put on double souls to protect their feet from the prickley pears. during the late rains the buffaloe have troden up the prairie very much which having now become dry the sharp points of the earth as hard as frozen ground stand up in such abundance that there is no avoiding them. this is particularly severe on the feet of the men who have not only their own weight to bear in treading these hacklelike points but also have the addition of the burthen which they draw and which in fact is as much as they can possibly move with. they are obliged to halt and rest frequently for a few minutes, at every halt these poor fellows rumble down and are so much fortiegued that many of them are asleep in an instant; in short their fatiegues are incredible; some are limping from the soreness of their feet, others faint and unable to stand for a few minutes, with heat and fatiegue, yet no one complains, all go with cheerfullness.

Clark:

June 23, 1805: to state the fatigues of this party would take up more of the journal than other notes which I find scercely time to set down.

Granted, Clark didn’t need to restate everything that Lewis had written. But I find the two entries, side by side, amusing. I have an image of everybody rolling their eyes at Lewis’ enthusiasm as he bounds around the camp. And Clark sitting, massaging his feet, frowning as he writes.

Lewis: ‘it’s very dry.’

More Lewis and Clark today, because I’m so enchanted by the diaries. Today it’s Lewis writing:

Thursday May 30 1805: many circumstances indicate our near approach to a country whos climate differs considerably from that in which we have been for many months. the air of the open country is asstonishingly dry as well as pure. I found by several experiments that a table spoon full of water exposed to the air in a saucer would avaporate in 36 hours when the murcury did not stand higher than the temperate point at the greatest heat of the day; my inkstand so frequently becoming dry put me on this experiment. I also observed the well seasoned case of my sextant shrunk considerably and the joints opened.

I know what he’s talking about: They’re moving through Montana now, and the air in this part of the continent is very dry. Certainly Alberta can be this dry (says I, typing with chapped fingers and itchy skin).

I like this description of some geological formations, too – the White Cliffs of the Missouri River – on the same day:

…with the help of a little immagination and an oblique view, at a distance are made to represent eligant ranges of lofty freestone buildings, having their parapets well stocked with statuary; collumns of various sculpture both grooved and plain, are also seen supporting long galleries in front of those buildings; in other places on a much nearer approach with the help of less immagination we see the remains or ruins of eligant buildings; some collumns standing and almost entire with their pedestals and capitals; others retaining their pedestals but deprived by time or accident of their capitals, some lying prostrate an broken others in the form of vast pyramids of conci structure bearing a serees of other pyramids on their tops becoming less as they ascend and finally terminating in a sharp point. nitches and alcoves of various forms and sizes are seen at different hights as we pass. a number of the small partin which build their nests with clay in a globular form attatched to the wall within those nitches, and which were seen hovering about the tops of the collumns did not the less remind us of some of those large stone buildings in the U. States. the thin stratas of hard freestone intermixed with the soft sandstone seems to have aided the waer in forming this curious scenery.

Then Lewis ends the entry with a rather lovely musing on what he has seen:

As we passed on it seemed as if those seens of visionary inchantment would never have and end; for here it is too that nature presents to the view of the traveler vast ranges of walls of tolerable workmanship, so perfect indeed are those walls that I should have thought that nature had attempted here to rival the human art of masonry had I not recollected that she had first began her work.

I wonder at Lewis imagining nature as an embodied, personified being. I’m not sure if this is common of the period, but it does seem to suggest that as Lewis encounters more of what he sees as an ‘unsettled’ land (it’s not uninhabited, as we know, but from his perspective, it’s certainly unsettled), he does seem to regard it differently. Calling bears ‘gentlemen,’ for example…and now this mention of nature as an individual. Is it possible that the expeditionary contact with an unfamiliar land – terra ignota, I suppose – results in a growing view of its embodiment as an individual?

I don’t know. But it’s something that I’ll be watching for as I keep reading.

Thinking about Lewis and Clark.

Spent most of yesterday doing a last pass over the term paper and the novella, and then I took a deep breath and I sent both in to the professor. That’s it, then: the course is finished; there’s only the grade to wait for. But it’s done…and I think it’s been one of the most useful of the research courses I’ve taken.

I’m reading more of the Lewis and Clark journals today. I’m beginning to develop a sense of who they were, and what they were like. Lewis is…well, he’s a bit fanciful. This is what he writes when he sees the mountains (he thinks they are the Rockies but they are, a footnote says, the ‘Bear’s Paw Range‘):

…from this point I beheld the Rocky Mountains for the first time, these points of the Rocky Mountains were covered with snow and the sun shone on it in such a manner as to give me the most plain and satisfactory view. While I viewed these mountains I felt a secret pleasure in finding myself so near the head of the heretofore conceived boundless Missouri; but when I reflected on the difficulties which this snowey barrier would most probably throw in my way to the Pacific, and the sufferings and hardships of myself and party in thim, it in some measure counterballanced the joy I had felt in the first moments in which I gazed on them; but as I have always held it a crime to anticipate evils I will believe it a good comfortable road untill I am compelled to believe differently.

And here’s Lewis again, writing on May 13, 1805, about how one of the perogue boats gets swamped and nearly sinks. He and Clark are walking on shore, and can only watch in horror. It is very nearly a disaster, since the boat in question holds some of the most valuable instruments and materials:

While the perogue lay on her side, finding I could not be heard, I for a moment forgot my own situation, and involluntarily droped by gun, threw aside my shot pouch and was in the act of unbuttoning my coat, before I recollected the folly of the attempt I was about to make; which was to throw myself into the river and indeavour to swim to the perogue; the perogue was three hundred yards distant the waves so high that a perogue could scarcely live in any situation, the water excessively could, and the stream rappid; had I undertaken this project therefore, there was a hundred to one but what I should have paid the forfit of my life for the madness of my project, but this had the perogue been lost, I should have valued but little. After having all matters arranged for the evneing as well as the nature of the circumstances would permit, we thought it a proper occasion to console ourselves and cheer the sperits of our men and accordingly took a drink of grog and gave each man a gill of sperits.

Or this passage, where Lewis describes the cook making sausage out of buffalo intestine:

…all is compleatly filled with something good to eat, it is tyed at the other end, but not any cut off, for that would make the pattern too scant; it is then baptised in the missouri with two dips and a flirt, and bobbed into the kettle; from whence after it be well boiled it is taken and fryed with bears oil untill it becomes brown, when it is ready to esswage the pangs of a keen appetite or such as travelers in the wilderness are seldom at a loss for.

I love that ‘two dips and a flirt’ line.

Clark is more practical. I see him as the introverted one. Not quite as hardy as Lewis, he mentions physical ailments more often:

last night at 1 oClock I was violently and Suddenly attacked with the Rhumetism in the neck which was So violent I could not move. Capt. Lewis applied a hot Stone raped in flannel, which gave me some temporey ease. We Set out early, the morning Cold.

‘my Neck,’ writes Clark, ‘is yet verry painfull at times Spasms.’ A week later, he’s still poorly, and when he is invited to a meal at an Indian village, he comments that his ‘indisposition provented my eating which displeased them, untill a full explenation took place.’

Later, in February, he falls through some ice and gets his feet and legs wet. ‘Walking on uneaven ice has blistered the bottoms of my feat,’ he writes, ‘and walking is painfull to me.’

But he’s not somebody I feel unsympathetic towards. He seems to be quietly keeping things running, even as Lewis is out gallavanting – he remarks about setting arguments between people, setting guards, that sort of thing. He’s no less thoughtful than Clark. This is what he writes about a member of the expedition who dies, early on (of something that sounds like a ruptured appendix, but which Clark describes as a ‘Biliose Chorlick’):

Sergeant Floyd much weaker and no better. Made Mr. Faufon the interpter a fiew presents, and the Indians a Canister of Whiskey. We Set out under a gentle breeze from the S.E. and proceeded on verry well. Serjeant Floyd as bad as he can be no pulse & nothing will Stay a moment on his Stomach or bowels. Passed two Islands on the S.S. and at the first Bluff on the S.S. Serj. Floyd Died with a great deal of Composure, before his death he Said to me, “I am going away” I want you to write me a letter.” We buried him on the top of the bluff 1/2 Mile below a Small river to which we Gave his name, he was buried with the Honors of War much lamented, a Seeder post with the Name Sergt. C. Floyd died here 20th of august 1804 was fixed ast the heat of his grave. This Man at all times gave us proofs of his firmness and Determined resolution to doe Service to his Countrey and honor to himself. after paying all the honor to our Decesed brother we camped in the Mouth of floyds River about 30 yards wide, a butifull evening.

As much as I joke about the contents of the journals, they…well, they stir something in me, I suppose. As they move from the ‘known’ lands into the ‘great unknown,’ the tone of the journals has changed, and you begin to feel some of the wonder and fear as they describe these new lands. Lewis takes to referring to bears as gentlemen, Clark worries about Sacagawea, who becomes ill in June, and takes careful note of the supplies of food and meat, recording it all dutifully. The more I’m reading, the more they’re becoming real people, who are afraid of bears and attacks by hostile forces, who frequently have to deal with boats that overturn or get swamped, and who are trying to keep it all together.

Certainly an aspect to the journals that I hadn’t anticipated.

Reading Lewis and Clark’s journals.

I finished out Leela Gandhi’s ‘Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction’ last night – an excellent book that did include some interesting thoughts on the colonial perspective (and an excellent list of references – I’ll be pulling a few). What I’m finding interesting – as I begin to scrape the surface of the reading course – is the notion of the colonial view of travel and Gandhi’s suggestion that the term ‘diaspora’ might be something that can also apply to colonial exploration and settlement.

What I’m finding challenging is that I’m less interested in the postcolonial reaction to exploration and expeditions…I’m specifically interested in the colonial construction of landscape and the approach to discovery and expedition. It’s not a barrier – yet – to the research, since the postcolonial work I’m reading now does tend to go into this view/perspective without needing much nudging. I’m already starting to get a good sense of how this research will work with my final research project…I’m very glad that I was able to get this course set up.

Now? I’m reading my way through the Journal of Lewis and Clark – the first of many expedition accounts that I’ll be covering. I’m using the Penguin edition, which contains the journal texts as they were written. Spelling mistakes and all (President Jefferson? Terrible speller. I was shocked). Lewis and Clark both kept journals, and there was considerable overlap between them – this was done on purpose, though, as something of a safeguard. Clark’s observations on the landscape and wildlife has been pretty enjoyable. I was reading about what he thought about magpies this morning, and smiling…we have quite a few of them in southern Alberta.

He describes them at some length, but it was these closing remarks that I particularly liked:

it is a most beatifull bird. the legs and toes are black and imbricated. it has four long toes, three in front and one in rear, each terminated with a black sharp tallon of from 3/8ths to 1/2 an inch in length. these birds are seldom found in parties of more than three or four and most usually at this season single as the halks and other birds of prey usually are. it’s usual food is flesh.

Feeding on flesh. Yep, that’s a magpie, all right.

It’s definitely been eye-opening – I knew very little about the Corps of Discovery and the expedition (I’d always assumed it was just the two of them, but no…quite a lot of people went with them). Interesting to read about their with the wildlife; they seem intent on killing most of what they find. And flogging subordinates. Did you know that they traveled under the Articles of War? I didn’t – quite a few of the Corps of Discovery have been flogged so far, and the expedition is only a few months old. One man falls asleep while on guard duty, and Lewis and Clark try him and then decide that they won’t put him to death…just flog him. That same day, somebody has a birthday…so after this, they have some whiskey and a dance.

Egads.

Some alternate titles for ‘The Journals of Lewis and Clark,’ then:

• The Journals of Lewis and Clark: Worst Trip EVER.
• The Boats, They Do Sink Some
• Let’s All Kill Buffalow
• Mosquiters are Awful
• I Flog, You Are Flogged
• You, Manservant – Jump in the River and Fetch Me Some Greens

I’m going to enjoy the book, I think.

Thursday.

Very cold yesterday, though not so bad today – only -30^o windchill on the way home. This picture? Was taken at -38^oC.

-38: the temperature where nostrils freeze and eyelashes get heavy with frozen tears from eyes that water in the cold.

It’s still quite beautiful, though. The days can be overcast, but there are often ice crystals falling, and even in the pale light of the afternoon, it looks rather magical. And at night, everything is frost-rimmed, and the steam from buildings and chimneys hangs in the air for ages.

And steam rising from the river. We’re not frozen over yet…in fact, I don’t think we will be this year.

SOPA.

Michael Geist says it better than I do.

Tuesday.

Cold again this morning: -38^oC with the windchill (-30 without). I’m starting the early entries of Lewis and Clark’s journals for my exploration class, but I rather thing I ought to switch over to Shackleton. I think it would be quite appropriate for the weather we’re having right now.

Do I mind this weather? No, of course not. I certainly enjoyed the warmer temperatures and the reprieve, but these are the temperatures I’ve come to expect in mid-January. And it makes the journey to work (and back again!) feel like something of an expedition. Although you do have to bundle up…otherwise your tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!

Chilly.

Why, yes…it was very chilly this morning. A good deal chillier than it has been in some time.

Not so bad that it wasn’t tolerable, of course. Lots and lots of layers are the key.