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| Lewis and Clark: Adventures West |
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| Lewis & Clark, 200 years later |
In his new book titled Lewis & Clark: Adventures West, author and photojournalist John Hamilton retraced the route of the famed explorers on another kind of journey: to take photographs for the book, and to make history come alive for his audience of young readers.
"I didn't want the expedition to seem like it was just another historical event, like names and dates in a dry textbook," Hamilton stated. "Lewis, Clark, and the other members of the expedition were real people, not just historical figures. They were a group of people using teamwork to get through an unknown land for two and a half years. They're icons of American history, but they had their good traits and bad, just like the rest of us."
Recently released by Sparrow Media Group, Lewis & Clark: Adventures West is detailed enough for any extensive school project. It contains scans of original journals, authentic maps, paintings, drawings, dates, and other "primary sources" loved by history teachers and librarians.
But it also was making the drama come alive for readers that Hamilton wanted. So, in the spring of 2001, he and his wife packed up their car and headed from St. Louis to the Pacific, taking stunning photographs and reliving the explorers' search for the elusive Northwest Passage.
Among other adventures on his expedition, Hamilton saw herds of elk and buffalo, survived hailstorms, canoed the Missouri River, hiked through freezing rain, and even came face-to-face with a grizzly bear – although it was at a fenced-in rescue facility.
I was at the Grizzly Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana, just outside Yellowstone National Park. It was humbling to see Ursus Horribilis rise up on two legs and roar from less than 20 feet away," he said. "I wondered how the expedition could have made it without anyone being mauled or eaten."
During the hailstorm, Hamilton's car took most of the beating. "It was just a small taste of how scary it must have been for the expedition, stuck out on the treeless plains."
The book also dramatizes the human side of the expedition, with extensive detail on Sacagawea, the Native American tribes and nations encountered by Lewis & Clark, and the physical and mental toll the journey took on the expedition party.
For his own journey, Hamilton thought how his technological devices and travel gear would have come in handy 200 years ago. "Wouldn't it be fun," he said, "to show up in 1804, and give Lewis and Clark outboard motors and a GPS |
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