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Since European immigrants stepped onto the eastern shores of North America, we new Americans have been drawn by a magnetic force which pulls us across this great Continent. Maybe it is the longing to see the the “other side of the mountain” which turns us into nomads. Or maybe it is nothing more than the result of populating a continent with a varied and sundry populace all selected from their old countries on the basis of wanderlust. None of us are the offspring of the village homebodies.
Once the new Americans established their own independent government, the United States, it wasted little time in making this previously random predisposition into a matter of national planning and import. Jefferson, our third President threw aside a twelve year posture as an opponent of an expansive federal government in order to buy from France the land which stood between his country and the western mountains. This was understood to mean the Rockies but then again the men who made the agreement thought that the mountains they ran up against when they ventured inland from the Pacific ( the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Ranges) were part of the Rockies. In any case, Jefferson wasted no time in pulling together a team of explorers under the leadership of Lewis and Clark. Thus began America’s favorite pastime, exploring the vast expanses of land that stretches between the world’s two great oceans.
Lewis and Clark are not only notable for marking the way for all who would follow but for establishing 3 important precedents: 1. by and large they followed in the footsteps of those who came before (in their case the native Americans), 2. their journey was memorialized in a book, and 3. the traveling party included a dog. Their dog was Seaman, a black Newfoundland. Since then, as we Americans have roamed this great continent we have done it on horseback, in wagons, riding trains and driving cars. And all the while, as often as not with a dog, with the wind in his nose, sharing the sense of adventure and the joy of discovery.
Maybe the most notable man to follow on the path of Lewis and Clark, with his dog at his side was John Steinbeck journeying with his dog Charlie. Steinbeck went forth across the land to report on the state of the people who had come to populate this great country His writing and the depth of his insights made the work a classic. There have been many other works that cronicle American travel avec un chien, two are notable for my purposes here. The first is Travels With Casey by Benoit Denizet-Lewis. This book was an effort to report on the dogs of America through Casey’s (the dog’s) eyes. It is a fun book but fails where all works that seek to see into dogs minds fail, dogs know the world essentially through their nose, a world we cannot glimpse because our sense of smell is almost non existent by comparison. A dog might meet a fellow canine and quickly determine the animal is very sick after giving him a good smell over, or he might conclude old Fido just got lucky with the bitch that lives down the street. We have no clue.
My favorite author of light happy mysteries is David Rosenfelt. He is a dog lover and dogs play a big part in most of his adventures. He also wrote a nonfiction book, Dogtripping, about moving 25 rescue dogs from California to Maine. It is a humorous and heartwarming book but the journey was undertaken as a matter of necessity and not the love of exploring the open road with your favorite traveling companion.
This humble scribbling is not the record of an effort to open new worlds. If anything, it is an attempt to celebrate the dreams of my youth through an adventure with my young dog Hudson. Like all creatures who travel together each will in some instances compromise our desires in order to accommodate the needs of the other, but I will make every effort to assure that the trip is highly dogcentric. For example, I will be spending 5 nights and 3 days with my former college roommate and dear friend John Morgan, but he lives with a Black Lab named Jack who should be a perfect new acquaintance for Hudson.
I will include some history lessons and photo shots that might not mean that much to Hudson while he is young but I’m sure they will enrich his memories in old age, For example we will stop in Jefferson City Missouri to take Hudson’s picture beside Seamans likeness at the Lewis and Clark statue there. In a world in which he will often hear “He is only a dog,” I want Hudson to know that his kind has shown courage and devotion in their interaction with humans which is seldom matched in humans interactions with each other.
But, if one thing is going to stand out on this trip it is Hudson’s aquatic abilities. Simply put Hudson is the Johnny Weissmuller of dogs and he deserves a chance to demonstrate his skills and build his Curriculum Vitae, while expanding his photo portfolio. As this trip unfolds, Hudson will swim in the rivers of West Virginia, the waters of the Mississippi and the Missouri, the Mountain streams off Pikes Peak, the waters of all five great lakes and much more. I am not sure if Guinness or anyone else has kept track of aquatic exploration by canine but Hudson is determined to leave the pretenses of many of his elk in his wake. This will be the story of his tour de force.
As Hudson and I prepare to leave we would love to hear from others who have taken to the open road with the smell of adventure uniting you and your friend in your own voyage of discovery. What did you learn? What was the greatest joy? What pitfalls did you discover.