Pilawt
Final Approach
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- Sep 19, 2005
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Pilawt
Those exultant, if imprecisely-spelled, words were penned into a small notebook by Captain William Clark near the mouth of the Columbia River, two hundred years ago this week.
What better way to mark the occasion than to fly over that very spot, to view the same ocean and consider the depth of their joy, and to wonder what the good Captains Lewis and Clark would have thought of this wonderful machine I fly today. This airplane, itself now nearly one-quarter as old as Captain Clark's journal, has on another day carried me in a mere ten hours over the route on which the Corps of Discovery spent nineteen months.
Shown in the attached photograph is Point Ellice, and the north end of the Astoria-Megler Bridge across the Columbia Estuary, part of U.S. Highway 101. Lewis and Clark and their party landed on this spot on November 10, 1805, only to be stranded here for nearly a week by wind, rain and tide, so close to the ocean just beyond Cape Disappointment in the distance. On November 15, Captain Clark wrote of
Lunch hour is almost over.
-- Pilawt
What better way to mark the occasion than to fly over that very spot, to view the same ocean and consider the depth of their joy, and to wonder what the good Captains Lewis and Clark would have thought of this wonderful machine I fly today. This airplane, itself now nearly one-quarter as old as Captain Clark's journal, has on another day carried me in a mere ten hours over the route on which the Corps of Discovery spent nineteen months.
Shown in the attached photograph is Point Ellice, and the north end of the Astoria-Megler Bridge across the Columbia Estuary, part of U.S. Highway 101. Lewis and Clark and their party landed on this spot on November 10, 1805, only to be stranded here for nearly a week by wind, rain and tide, so close to the ocean just beyond Cape Disappointment in the distance. On November 15, Captain Clark wrote of
"this dismal nitich where we have been confined for six days past, without the possibility of proceeding on, returning to a better Situation, or get out to hunt, Scerce of Provisions, and torrents of rain poreing on us all the time ..."
I cannot stay here longer to imagine the hardship they endured. I must turn my craft southeastward toward home and work.
Lunch hour is almost over.
-- Pilawt
