"High, butifull Situation"

The Missouri River near White Cloud, Kansas

Passd on the Left of the Isle des parques. High butifull Situation-- on the L S. the land indifferent lands. —William Clark, July 2, 1804

One of the advantages of reading the unabridged Journals of Lewis and Clark is that you get to see several versions of an entry. For example, in one entry for July 2, 1804, Clark writes the words “High butifull Situation.” It’s not clear what Clark thought of as beautiful—although certainly not the “indifferent lands” on his “larboard” or left-hand side. In the other version, which must be a re-write, the phrase disappears, but what would an early 18^th Century soldier/explorer/slaveowner mean by the word “beautiful?”

I know from living in Alaska for 30 years that beauty can be a transient, subjective experience. I’ve ridden past the Chugach Mountains hundreds of times. Sometimes the view of those mountains, crisp in cold, winter light, or, at other times fogged in and fuzzy, and I’ve felt that sense of awe, that the universe is bigger and wilder and that time is longer than my little mind can grasp. I feel that way sometimes.

But most of the time, they are just the mountains on the way to or from the airport.

On that day in July, 1804, Clark’s men were navigating around islands and huge swaths of driftwood near present-day Platte County, Missouri. At some point he glanced up and noticed something—we don’t know what—that he thought was beautiful. Whatever it was, it came and went quickly.

Two days later, Clark says Lewis “walked on Shore above this creek and discovered a high moun[d] from the top of which he had an extensive view, 3 paths concentering at the moun[d].”

Who made those paths, and how old were they 120 years ago when Lewis saw them? Was the mound a sacred site then or at some earlier time? Was it a meeting place? A trading post? A former village? A burial ground? I think maybe what appeals to me the most about the L&C journals are the holes in the story, the negative space. Clark mentions this in passing. It must have come from a conversation with Lewis, who probably had theories, but Clark doesn’t record that conversation. Just one of those things, intriguing enough to talk about, but not enough to write about at length.

Maybe beauty is always fleeting, always caught in glimpses. But maybe some kinds of beauty endure. A memory of a beautiful experience is also beautiful, no? And there is such a thing as a beautiful life.

Czeslaw Milosz writes a gossamer-fine poem that meanders through the abstracts, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood. A poet isn’t supposed to write about such abstractions—or so they say. But to me the poem works because it’s so delicately argued. The poem is called “One More Day.” Here are the last several lines:

And though the good is weak, beauty is very strong.

Nonbeing sprawls, everywhere it turns into ash whole expanses of nonbeing,

It masquerades in shapes and colors that imitate existence

And no one would know it, if they did not know that it was ugly.

And when people cease to believe that there is good and evil

Only beauty will call them and save them

So that they still know how to say: this is true and that is false.