Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

"Benjamin Long spent 10 years as a newspaper journalist in Montana covering natural history, wildlife, and environmental issues of the West." (backcover)

This book is similar to Our Natural History: The Lessons of Lewis and Clark by Daniel Botkin, except it is less scientific, more journalistic, and overall a more personal narrative than Botkin's. The author writes about the praire dog, grizzly bear, buffalo (bison), beaver, cutthroat trout, sharptail grouse, the whitebark pine and cottonwood, Clark's nutcraker, the wolf and coyote, and the white sturgeon.

As a journalist, the author favors political rhetoric over objectivity, for example, on page 46 he writes: "I am convinced that if grizzlies had evolved opposable thumbs, they would be the ones studying us and we would be the ones hiding in the mountains." Earlier on page 30, after mentioning the shooting of buffalo from passenger trains in the 1870s, he remarks: "Bison were the varmints of their day. Today we settle for praire dogs. The only difference is the size of the target." On the modern day shooting of prairie dogs, he mentions on page 27 that as a boy he saw shooting them as "a harmless diversion" then continues with: "I grew out of it, but not everyone does."

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.