The Sea Bird has been absent from the roll call of the world wide web for several days during our transit south from Seattle to Portland. Steel plates obliterated views from the windows and only the echoes of ghostly guests rang through the passageways.
But now our guests are back! Smiling faces eager to explore the Columbia and Snake Rivers in the wake of Lewis and Clark have arrived, bringing sunshine to the interior of the ship as well as outside.
The Corps of Discovery looked at this land with wide-eyed wonder. Their mission was to learn not only if a passage to the Pacific existed but to document as much as possible of the flora, fauna and human inhabitants of the region. Much has changed since that time. Just as our vessel leaves a wake behind us, the wake of settlement, commerce and control of a River followed rapidly after Lewis and Clark. They had no map such as the one we examined today. But the rocks were the same. They too could watch the colors change from the first hints of rose on the basaltic cliffs to the golds of sunrise and the flaxen grasses as the day grew brighter. Some of the lichens that painted hexagonal columns with shades of lime or orange may well have been the same that attracted a private's eye. A hand brushed against the leaves of gray-green sagebrush most likely would have produced the same fragrant odor we inhaled today.
The same and yet so different.
