Louis. Their goal was to reach the sea, but they fully expected to find woolly mammoths and mastodons along the way. What they were hoping for was a water route to the Pacific. They found an overland passage instead. Clearly the Lewis and Clark expedition was the highlight of Lewis’s life. He committed suicide three years later. But Clark went on to father ten children and live a full and fruitful life. Now we come to the point in our journey where they began theirs. I have only seen this place once before, from the air. In 1993 when I flew over this confluence, the Mississippi and Missouri had converged into a single body of water. Now with what is left of Rita, I can hardly see a thing. “I can’t see any buoys, Sir,” Tom says. “Just keep in the main channel,” Jerry replies. We are coming down from Portage Des Sioux to the north and are only just now drifting by St. Louis, which we can barely discern. The Gateway Arch resembles two hands rising out of a grave, disappearing into the clouds, a half circle, no longer complete.
