Leaving the Clearwater Canyons
Wednesday July 24, 2002
Had a 530 am
breakfast with about
6 other farmers &
ranchers who don't
smoke.
Lots of dead deer along the road; the smell comes first and then one often sees a hoof, stunned expression on a snout buried in the
cheat grass and thistles along the road. Some are still cautious and have a figure that almost matches the ground.
Met this biker at about 7 am. He
is a retired football coach who
winters in Mesa, AZ. During his
summer north of Orofino a few
miles, he cuts wood. He about 11
cord ahead at this time.
He normally cuts 125 cords per summer. He said there is something magic about
being out in the woods, just you and the tree that you have just cut down. In AZ, he
bikes 10 miles every day, walks at least three, and on Sunday does a 20 mile
mountain bike ride. Here he mountain bikes about 10 every day as he pointed to a
ridge about 500 feet above us and continues his daily 3 mile walking regimen.
Volcanic
shapes and mounds
abound in this
area. The sun
had not been
up that long
and the pines
were not giving
off their odors
. Yet...it was
suppose to be hot
. So what is new?
 Still waters with only a few
rapids dotted the Clearwater
here. Have been travelling too
early for fishing people.
Surprising white beaches. The
herons won't allow me even to
slow and stop along the road.
They hear/see me and
immediately take off to the other
river's side. Gangly characters
they are looking like military grey
cargo plane as they fly away.
It isn't everyday you meet some one on a bike with a kerosene
lantern. This asocial fellow, Longroad, and his dog, Too,
stopped for a few words at my bidding.

Z: So where did you come from? L: silence

Z: Where are you off to? L: Riggins

Z: But isn't that in the other direction? L: I am from Montana

Z: Mind if I take your picture: L: "nods yes".

I say. "Hey, Too, look at the camera." Snap

This part of the country
is where old box cars
come to die. These
men cut apart old box
cars and sell the scrap
.
The Nez Perce (actually none had pierced noses) had subterranean homes during the winter in these parts. They know almost a
hundred roots for a variety of purposes. The Nez Perce National Historical Park had samples of camas root for us to taste. You
make a fire in a pit of stones, put over a matt of reeds, add the roots, put another matt above that and add an addtional fire from
above. And the roots get baked. The result is a very intense carbohydrate protein pellets after grinding the roots. It plus the oily
salmon made Discovery corps sick as they had been only eating meat. They had quite the diarrhoea. Again, There were fewer dogs
when they left the Nez Perce tribe. In Lewiston, I asked the motel clerk if there were any restaurants specializing in fish, e.g. salmon.
She said Skippers and the Red Lobster. I asked her if she knew where the library was and her 20 year old mind had no clue. It
actually took three people to find out that the library was next to Walmart.
Henry Spalding, with his friend of Marcus Whitman, led a
Presbyterian mission to here in 1836. Spalding began his
mission and school nearby. Believing in secular as well as
religious teaching, he taught the Indians irrigated farming,
brought in the Northwest's first printing press, and built saw
and flour mills. But as the hostility slowly developed with
encroaching settlers, Spalding left after the Whitman massacre
in 1847 at Walla Walla. He returned with the gold rush "to
labor among his converts until his death in 1874.
"At the distance of one mile from the lodges I met three
Indian boys. When they saw me, they ran and hid
themselves in the grass. I dismounted...searched and
found two of them, gave them Small pieces of ribin &
Sent them forward to the village. Soon after a man
Came out to me, with great caution, & Conducted us
to a large Spacious Lodge...." William Clark

As long as 3000 years ago they (Nez Perce) had large
oval house, 28 feet long 24 fee wide. To build these
house they put a bark and mat covering over a frame
of 50 or so house posts. Four or more families lived in
a house this size. From their village here by the river,
they went out to hunt deer or to dig camas.. They had to travel widely in their constant search for food.
The wind is down river so you can't really smell Lewiston until you are in the Lewiston Bowl of the Clearwater River. The
road widens to four lanes and about the 8 times the traffic. I use my old rusty mountain bike skills to avoid all the detrus of
the town: tire parts, bottles, cans, Dairy Queen containers, Gulp 32 oz. containers, diapers, cigarette packages, flattened 24
beer can boxes, the beer and malt cans, bolts, ATM receipts...you know....it goes on and on.

Lewiston's old downtown is sadly dying; it seemingly has no joy about being part of the Lewis & Clark Trail. It is just a
working town like Quincy, MA or Allentown, PA or East St. Louis, IL. It has many 'For Rent' signs in the windows. I
wonder if my own little bicycle biopsy view of Lewiston is missing the main center. Seems like a very concrete working
person's town with perhaps a hard pew view of how to enjoy being alive. Will look around town more on the bike to see if
there is a little 'uniqueness' to an otherwise very corporate homogenous identity.
Goodness, My Trail's End
So here it is: civilization. Make the most of it. In thinking about Lewis and his demise, no wonder he committed suicide. If it
wasn't his mercury laced Thunder Clapper pills ( used for every illness) it must have been he could see his own future or
even ours in a manner. I could see how the highs and lows of such intense travels could be a horrible con
trast to return to 1800's society from his independent travails. Imagine being your own journey thru all these strange peoples
and gruelling hardships and then returning to be confronted and surrounded with beaurocratic people which he had to
compromise, to negotiate, to have a mundane reduced intensity of daily behavior. He surely must have idenitfied with
Gulliver and the talking enlightened horses. Travel can be so addictive for novelty, stimulation, addrenalin, sensual
exaggerations. No wonder it was hard for him. We could lump it all into the manic depressive diagnosis, I guess. More
handy for our modern understanding. Or perhaps it is just the 109 degree road cooking of my grey matter.

Anyway, for my little adventure, I was simply thinking that I should have ended the trip a little further west, or maybe added
several more days, or continued to the ocean, or maybe just over that hill.... Zelada

End Wed.