Exactly what kind of beaver reporter am I? I can’t believe I let you down and didn’t tell you what was happening right now on the missouri river where a dougout canoe called the Belladona Beaver is retracing the steps of Lewis and Clark in magnificent style.
The plucky adventure is the combined effort of author, historian and bush expert Thomas J. Elpel and the great-great-great-great-great grandson of Mr. Meriwether himself who spent a year hollowing out a canoe that from a massive tree (they couldn’t get a cottonwood big enough so used a douglas fur) and are now making their way down the missouri just the way their forefathers did.
Missouri River Corps of Rediscovery #1
Our little fleet consists of three modern canoes plus my dugout canoe, and six men to pilot them down the river—not so respectable as Columbus, Capt. Cook, or Lewis and Clark, but still viewed by us with equal pleasure as we embark on our own journey of discovery.
Scott, Chris, John, Josiah, Adam, and I launched from Missouri Headwaters State Park near Three Forks, Montana on June 1st to begin our six-month voyage downriver to St. Louis. Friends and well-wishers came to see us off, and seven other paddlers joined us for the day in their own canoes and kayaks.
Why??? You might ask when you see how darned much work it took to hollow out this log and get things this far, Why would men forsake their couch and cable TV just to paddle a journey in a tree.
But WHY NOT is a better question. To follow the footsteps of an ancestor that basically made America as we know it possible. To use your own hands to create a canoe from a tree as heavy as our history. Of course following the footsteps of the beaver. This time literally inside a beaver canoe.
The whole journey is being reported on their website which starts aptly with a quote from the famous Meriwether Lewis journal account. You can follow for yourself here. Not for the feint of heart or timid of hand. But fortune favors the brave and destiny waits for no man. June 11th they posted their third report from the river where they are boldly embracing their history by finding wild morels and catching trout after a full days paddle. Honestly you have to vibrate on a very rare frequency to commit 2 years of your life to this, but I am sure they will learn and see things we can never never understand.
As an example of the need to be made of sterner stuff to than we can hope for – just reading about their first portage getting around the Toston dam makes me queasy.
We never actually weighed Belladonna Beaver the dugout canoe, but optimistically claimed that it weighed 500 lbs. In actuality, four men cannot even lift the front of the canoe, and the total weight might be considerably more. By weighting down the back, lifting the front, and winching from a tree, we succeeded in getting her head out of the water and on the grass. Switching to the next tree, we pulled Belladonna across the grass on PVC pipes as rollers, then towed her forward with a rope from the truck and ultimately used a car jack to get her head high enough to load onto the canoe trailer.
One of the many disadvantages of not using the plentiful cottonwoods of their forefathers is that the wood dries more slowly and probably takes on more water, in addition to being full of knots and very hard to carve. No matter. They are more than men up to the challenge. Let’s hope they see some actual beavers on the journey to capture the spirit more firmly,
I’m sure we’ll be checking in on them again soon. Here is a video if their test run last year on the Maria river.
