Word: montana
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Jefferson had given Lewis an unambiguous mission: to find "the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent." Judged by that yardstick, the captains had utterly failed. What Jefferson hoped would be a "practicable" water route had turned out to be a brutal portage across parts of Montana and Idaho that included some of the most rugged wilderness in North America. If nothing else, later traders and settlers, appalled by the expedition's experience, learned where not to go and found a friendlier route along the Platte River across Nebraska and over South Pass in Wyoming...
...BOATS The corps used 25 vessels throughout the journey. A 26th boat--a custom-designed collapsible iron frame covered with skins--was carried all the way to what is now Montana, where it failed upon hitting the water...
...Pirogue Lewis bought it, possibly in Pittsburgh, to lighten the keelboat's load on the shallow Ohio River. The 41-ft. craft was hidden with supplies at the Marias River in what is now Montana. Returning 13 months later, the men found the boat had rotted away...
Even though I love them, they are haunting in my dreams. When I see grizzlies in the northwestern Montana forest up here, in real life, it is more exhilarating than frightening. After the bear has seen or heard or scented me and galloped away in alarm, a feeling of awe remains. Almost always the bears run away. Sometimes if they feel that they don't have an escape route, they will bluff charge, veering away hard at the last yard, the last foot, the last inch. I don't know why they are so much more frightening in my dreams...
...Lower 48 that are still wild enough to support even a vestigial population of grizzlies. In the U.S., the great bear has been reduced to near prisoner status, surviving only for certain in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem (anywhere from 200 to 600 bears); the Northern Continental Divide of Montana (400 to 500); the Selkirk population in northern Idaho (30 to 40); an enclave in northern Washington State; and, most imperiled, Montana's Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem, where perhaps two dozen survive. Lewis and Clark passed near here in 1805, south of the Cabinet Mountains, pushing hard for the Pacific then...