Fort Clatsop - March 14, 2012

Our big adventure today was a visit to a wonderful sculpture garden in Trenton. It's been a beautiiful couple of days here in New Jersey, and apparently it's been similar in Minnesota. Tomorrrow promises more of the same.We've noticed that it's been more humid here than in Minnsota. It generally is. Not that Minnsota doesn't get muggy—it does—but New Jersey summers are worse. Not as bad as Washington DC, or the almost-swimmable humidity of summer in the Deep South.

In regards to wetness (and humidity) I've been thinking of the Lewis and Clark expedition's winter at Fort Clatsop in what is now Oregon. It was a long, miserable inter, not because of cold, but because of the incessant damp. Out of the 106 days they spent at the fort, it rained 94. They could not perserve meat in the ways they knew how. Clothes rotted off their bodies, and bedding off their beds.

At Christmas, "We would have Spent this day the nativity of Christ in feasting had we any thing either to raise our Sperits or even gratify our appetites. Our Diner concisted of pore [lean] Elk, So much Spoiled that we eate it thro' mear necessity. Some Spoiled pounded fish and a fiew roots."

So what were they doing the local native tribes weren't, and vice versa? Is this another of those cases, like Shackleton's refusal to wear parkas and other "native" clohing, of blind cultural obstinacy?