She had blue eyes. I saw them. Before she tilted her blonde head and left me holding an empty book. She stepped over soft dirt and evaporated through a slit in the landscape. A crunch, the grinding of rigored limbs.

And she was gone.

Was she the person I was supposed to find? The native who would be Thomas Jefferson’s link to the Middle Ages?Continue Reading

If Meriwether Lewis had lived to be 80, I wonder what he could’ve accomplished. Would he have continued to serve as Territorial Governor of Upper Louisiana? Found a wife? Published his journals on his own (very scientific) terms? Weathered an election for national public office?

We’ll never know.

And, today, Merry doesn’t really matter much to me.Continue Reading