People, penguins, and plastic trees Book

I enjoyed this book. It wasn't quite what I thought it'd be, but it still satisfied some of the desires that led me to pick up the book in the first place.

The start and end locations of the Lewis and Clark expedition are both dear to me. I lived in St. Louis for three years and quickly fell in love with the city (against all expectations!), and one of my favorite places to hike was a trail along the Missouri river that was marked as a Lewis & Clark spot. The Columbia River Gorge that separates Oregon and Washington is currently my favorite spot in the entire country (someday I will live there... someday...) and I just returned from another awesome trip to that region. St. Louis and the Columbia River Gorge are such different places, but they are brought together through the Lewis & Clark expedition.

My recent trip to the Gorge--where I saw many L&C trail signs and informative displays--reminded me of my desire to learn more about the L&C expedition. I was browsing the L&C section in Powell's bookstore (yes, the expedition has an entire section devoted to it!), looking for a book that covered the most interesting parts of the expedition with some modern commentary, and this book seemed to fit that. The book is described as an examination of the regions L&C visited, comparing the land and animals during L&C's time to today. This isn't the best description. Instead, I would say that the book is about conservation (of the environment and indigenous species), using L&C's journals as a way to understand what the continent was like before European influence.

Although the book wasn't quite what I expected, it worked out just fine because I definitely care about conserving the environment and I'm interested in the "natural" state of nature compared to what people have done to nature. The book satisfied my desire to learn more about the L&C expedition, although I actually learned more about the region than the expedition. (But that's fine with me! I love the west. Everything between St. Louis and the Pacific Ocean = LOVE! I do not like living on the east coast. Arghh.)

This book is old (originally published in 1995), but it didn't feel too outdated. (The author frequently mentioned the "growing" environmentalism movement, and I can't help but think that people probably care less about the environment now than they did in the early 1990s. I could be wrong, of course.) The writing could be a little repetitive at times (I suppose the author underestimated readers' memory), and there were some dry spots where the author would list all of L&C's experiences from their journals to arrive at calculations (e.g., the author would list the expedition's encounters with grizzly bears by date and frequency. I didn't read need to see that; I trust the author can count them accurately). The author also strayed off topic with some frequency. All in all, though, it was an interesting book and I certainly learned from it.