SCENES OF VISIONARY ENCHANTMENT

SCENES OF VISIONARY ENCHANTMENT Reflections on Lewis and Clark Dayton Duncan University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2004. Bibliography, x + 202 pp. $22.00 cloth.

The threads uniting the seventeen colorful vignettes in Scenes of Visionary Enchantment are the colors, textures, sounds, and humans experiences inherent in the grand story of the Lewis and Clark exploration. The expedition's journals are military reports and therefore essentially deal with facts, not feelings. Yet, the human drama is reflected in the journals' details, as Duncan demonstrates with a crescendo of near-disasters-his "nearly" list-and by piecing together all of the "walk-ons" by individuals, as he does in "The Alexander Hamilton Willard Expedition."

The ten-step "Lewis and Clark Guide to Leadership" is among the richest pieces in this eminently rereadable book. "The View from the Home Front" sheds soft light on an oft-ignored facet of the journey. "Meditations on a Grave" celebrates lessons about ordinary people as historical heroes. "The Most Hospitable, Honest and Sincere People" illuminates how multidimensional and richly human were the encounters between the Corps of Discovery and the Indians, and it reminds us of the post-expeditionary "saga of Indian survival against all odds" that was "far more heroic than the Corps of Discovery's" (p. 117). The title essay, "seens of Visionary Inchantment"-in Lewis's sensitive phonetics-is a memorial to Duncan's friend and frequent trail companion Stephen Ambrose and a memoir of their numerous visits to a favorite place, the White Cliffs of the Missouri.

The book's envoi, "Toilsome Days and Wristless Nights," looks at the solemn meditation with which Lewis ended his journal entry on his thirty-first birthday, August 18,1805. Duncan summons the entry's orthodox interpretation established more than a century ago by historian Elliott Coues, who read it as "a sadly interesting passage" and linked it symptomatically with Lewis's suicide four years later. Removed from the beguiling glow of historical hindsight, however, Lewis's four sentences add up to the simple, timeless prescription for good mental health: put the past in perspective; make plans for the future; live in the present.

About half of these stories originated as speeches written for audiences gathered at specific places for common reasons, and the rest have been cast in the same mold. This commonality accounts for the relative brevity of most of them and also determines their overall tone. A good speech, like a good film, has just one chance to seize an audience's attention. It doesn't linger over trivia, so it shuns footnotes in favor of asides. It won't brook interruption, so it forswears indexing.

To capture the scope of the passion and sensibility the author invested in these seventeen pieces, they should be read aloud to one or more listeners, for their feeling resides partly in the rhythm and inflection of the words. So far, the Lewis and Clark bicentennial observance has inspired a few really good reads. Scenes of Visionary Enchantment is a good listen, too.

Joseph A. Mussulman

VIAS, Inc., Missoula, Montana

Copyright Montana Historical Society Summer 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved