Backtracking: By Foot, Canoe, and Subaru Along the Lewis and Clark Trail [Paperback]

Benjamin Long (Author), Karen Nichols (Photographer)

Book Description

Series: Backtracking | Publication Date: June 28, 2004

With a spirit of exploration rarely seen in modern times, Ben Long and his wife, Karen Nichols, quit their jobs, sold their house, and set out to follow in the footsteps of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Their quest: To look at the plants and animals encountered during the Corps of Discovery's great endeavor and report on how nature is doing after two centuries of "civilization." Long's voice is appealing, and readers will have no trouble imagining themselves traveling along with the couple in their fully loaded Subaru. Long and Nichols drove from Montana to the Pacific, checking on Lewis and Clark's natural "discoveries" along the way: prairie dogs, cutthroat trout, sharptail grouse, coyotes, beavers, bison, grizzlies, whitebark pine, even a dinosaur fossil. Everywhere, they encounter another persistent force of nature — human nature. This highly readable travelogue is informed by humor, history, the sacred journals of Lewis and Clark, and the vivid experience of discovery.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Montana journalist Benjamin Long's retracing of the Lewis and Clark expedition is an American elegy. Long calls his mode of exploration "backtracking"--the opposite of following. "If you follow," an old trapper once explained to the author, "the animal is just reacting to your presence, trying to avoid you. Backtracking, you study the evidence as the animal laid it down." Armed with such knowledge and "weary of careers that found us impounded in our cubicles," Long and his wife quit their jobs, sell the house, and embark on their own Corps of Rediscovery in an old Subaru, hoping to uncover some sort of truth about the Western territory nearly two centuries after America's most famous explorers. That truth, sadly, is mostly about loss.

"Of all the passages from the journals of Lewis and Clark," writes Long in the introduction, "the ones that fueled my imagination-fire were those with images of wilderness and wildlife." In this spirit, each subsequent chapter of Backtracking is devoted to a life form that Lewis and Clark encountered on their two-year odyssey. On the Great Plains, Long pays a visit to beleaguered prairie-dog towns, whose residents intrigued Clark enough that he sent one on a long trip back East, where it "lived out the rest of its days in a Philadelphia museum." Like Old West ghost towns, the legendary prairie-dog towns have seen their citizenry dwindle to bust--from an estimated five billion residents to perhaps three million--bringing an entire ecosystem to near-collapse. Another mammal Lewis and Clark could hardly avoid was the grizzly bear, with Lewis famously recording, "I must confess I do not like the gentleman and had reather [sic] fight two Indians than one bear." Long and his wife, however, must detour away from the original trail with a team of wildlife biologists since "the bears can no longer be found anywhere along the explorers' four-thousand-mile route." And so on, with American bison, Westslope cutthroat trout, sharptail grouse, wolves, and more vanished. If this all sounds a bit depressing, at least Long proves an informed and companionable guide along the way. Much has changed in the 200 years since Jefferson first commissioned Lewis and Clark to investigate the newly bought Louisiana Purchase. What hasn't abated is the desire to seek out America's remote natural riches. --Langdon Cook --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Reviewed with John Holt's Coyote Nowhere.

Holt and Long, two Montana writers who set out to find America's Old West buried beneath its twenty-first-century trappings, have produced remarkably entertaining books, effectively combining memoir, travelogue, and history.Holt, the author of 13 previous books (mostly about fishing in Montana), set out with his partner, photographer Ginny Diers, to peel back the modern age and reveal the remnants of the Old West. He found what he was looking for in the lives of a handful of ranchers, Native Americans, and fisherman, all of whom are living like their ancestors might have lived a century and a half ago. He constantly contrasts the West he loves with the West being invaded by vacationers, recreational-vehicle owners, and others who seem determined to destroy what precious little remains of the glorious Wild West. This is a moving book and a heartfelt plea to keep the West alive. Although perhaps not quite so aggressive (Holt's prose is full of scathing remarks about people who thoughtlessly trample over the remnants of the Old West), Long's book is just as passionate. A former newspaper journalist who specialized in natural history and environmental issues related to the western states, Long took to the road with his wife, Karen Nichols (who, like Holt's companion, is a photographer), to retrace the steps of Lewis and Clark from the Missouri River to the Pacific. Like Holt, Long wanted to rediscover the past, to recapture the excitement Lewis and Clark must have felt when they saw grizzlies and beautiful vistas and tall, ancient trees for the first time.These books, separately or together, are sure to appeal to readers with an interest in travel or the American West. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Sasquatch Books; First Trade Paper Edition edition (June 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570614024
• ISBN-13: 978-1570614026
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,350,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Most Skookum Adventure, October 24, 2000

By 

Susan J. Erickson (Bellingham, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Backtracking: By Foot, Canoe, and Subaru Along the Lewis and Clark Trail (Hardcover)

Skookum. Backtracking is a skookum adventure. Long explains that in the Chinook language skookum means big or powerful. This account of a trek backtracking the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition is just that. The book is a fascinating blend of history, biology, ecology, and philosophy that took me, a confirmed lover of comfort, along on the trip.

Long and his wife retrace portions of the trail and report on the status of several of the wildlife and plant species that Lewis and Clark described in their original journals. We learn about the black-tailed prairie dog, the grizzly bear, the American bison, the Missouri River beaver, the Westslope cutthroat, the Columbia sharptail grouse, the Whitebark pine and the Clark's nutcracker, the wolf and the coyote, the White sturgeon and the Great Plains cottonwood. We learn why and how these animals and plants matter today.

Long, although his view is clear, does not resort to the adversarial language that pushes opposing forces further apart. He reminds us that, "There is too much at stake for us to give pessimism a chance. There is still too much to be lost."

Grouse dancing at dawn on some remote and windswept lek. After reading this book I want to see for myself.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Montanan Review, January 21, 2001

By 

chianti - See all my reviews

This review is from: Backtracking: By Foot, Canoe, and Subaru Along the Lewis and Clark Trail (Hardcover)

As a native Montanan and one who was mandated to memorize Lewis and Clark trivia to get her high school diploma I started the book with trepidation. I was more than surprised to love this book! I have read it twice and bought one for a friend. This book takes details and facts and puts life, love and laughter into them. Read this book- it makes you feel good and brings a bit of nature inside.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not what I expected, February 28, 2008

By 

Kevin C. Saff (Calgary) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Backtracking: By Foot, Canoe, and Subaru Along the Lewis and Clark Trail (Paperback)

I expected this to be a book where the author learns about Lewis and Clark by examining the places that they had been; that is, using the idea of backtracking to discover Lewis and Clark from a unique perspective. In the introduction, the author and his wife sell their home and buy a Subaru repair manual, preparing me for the story of an epic journey undertaken by various means of transportation.

However, this is not what the book is about at all. It has more to do with checking in on the animals that Lewis and Clark mentioned in their journals two hundred years before. Each chapter focuses on a different animal, related in an apparently arbitrary order. We don't hear much about the journeying to visit these animals, and very little about Lewis and Clark. Then the book ends; there is no conclusion to the idea of an epic break in the author's life brought up in the beginning, nor much attempt to tie the chapters together.

In spite of my disappointment, the book is well-written in a journalist's style, and none of the chapters would look out of place in a nature magazine if accompanied by large color photographs. Perhaps the only chapter that really stood out to me, however, was the beautiful dance of the sharptail grouse and how they affected native culture. I can certainly recommend that chapter to anyone.