A Thanksgiving Surprise?

Hello again friends, this is Dick Folk with Stories from the Road. You know, Stories from the Road is a title, it's both a metaphor for life, but sometimes it's a literal road. And this time it's a literal one, Ruth and I are just back from a driving trip to Oregon. We had north out of Northern Colorado up through Laramie, Wyoming across southern Wyoming into eastern Utah and then north into Idaho and then further north up through Boise and up to the Oregon Washington state line. Between Oregon and Washington is a river, a big one. I love rivers, the color, the variety, the look, foliage, pools, the rapids, all around the world. Rivers bring life to the land and nutrients and wildlife and commerce. Historically in the wilderness, without roads, rivers have always been the roads, still arid all around the planet. In North America there are so many river names that call up the stories of people and explorations aren't there. I mean, listen to these sounds, the Susquehanna, James the Monongahila, Shenandoah, Yukon, Ohio, Great Mississippi, Missouri, Rio Grande, Colorado, Sacramento, Klamath, the Snake. And then the one we drove decide for 185 miles last week from Hermiston, Oregon to Portland. That's called the Columbia. There was a moment in time and I missed it when I actually got Ruth to sing that song she had learned in the fifth grade when she was a student in Portland, Oregon. They taught them history for Oregon and she sang via verse or so of Roland, Columbia, Roland. There are nine rivers, over a thousand miles long in the United States. The Columbia is one of those, slowing 1,243 miles from British Columbia to Canada, south and west of the Pacific Ocean, it flows through four mountain ranges and drains more water to the Pacific Ocean than any other river in North or South America. And I knew you'd want to know that. One more thing, it once produced the largest salmon runs on earth with returns often exceeding 30 million salmon per year. Only a fraction of that today. Oh, did I say that it irrigates 600,000 acres of farmland as well? In May of 1804, virtually no one would know that. Until two young men, leading about three dozen others, mostly soldiers, left St. Charles, Missouri, heading for the Great Northwest Territory and the Pacific Ocean. Their names were Captain Merrow Eather Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark. That expedition, as many of you would know, became known as the Lewis and Clark expedition. It was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson not long after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and he wanted to explore and to map the newly acquired territory to find a practical route across the western half of the continent and to establish an American presence in this territory before European powers attempted to establish claims in the region. You can interpret that for trade. The campaign's secondary objective were scientific and economic, study the areas, plants, animal life and geography, and to establish trade with the local Native American tribes. That expedition returned to St. Louis to report its findings to Jefferson with maps and sketches and journals in hand, 140 maps and lots of botanical specimens. They had covered in 16 months over 8,000 miles round trip with only one death, and that was early on, I think a young man I think suffered from acute appendicitis. As one might surmise, they discovered a ton and were surprised by a ton. And surprise didn't stop on the last 300 mile leg of their journey down the Columbia River. They had traveled by keelboat. Those are large boats, specially constructed 55 feet long, and perogues, those are smaller flat bottom craft, up the Mississippi, Missouri, clear water, and snake rivers. Sometimes they had to portage the boats, carry them some part, sometimes they had to go and horseback in some walking, but finally they got to the Columbia. They were surprised there, not just by the size of it, I'm sure, but by insect clouds, according to historical records, thousands, maybe millions of insects, so persistent and gnawing, if I could be so blunt, that they could only get relief by stripping naked and submerging in the waters of the Columbia. And also enormous flocks of birds, of ducks, and geese, and all kinds of waterfowl that sometimes were so loud at night, they couldn't even sleep. And then the waters themselves surprised them. Today, when you drive down the Columbia, it's rather placid. It has three major dams in that section of the river, but in that day they had rapids. The gorge, what they call the Columbia River, gorge, which runs from a town called the Dallas to down near Gresham, Oregon, which is just east of Portland. The gorge is 80 miles of power and beauty, and at some points, 4,000 feet deep. Rapids, well, that will surprise you. The indigenous people in the villages there said, essentially, you can't take those boats down those waters, but apparently they could. Surprise in life is the name of the game, isn't it? I mean, I'm fond of saying life is what happens when you expected something else. We had midterm elections on November the 8th. Lots of folks were surprised on both sides of the divide. If I can use that word, both sides of the aisle for sure. And then just three days later, on November the 11th, we have Veterans Day, which honors those who served in our armed forces now. Over the years, over the decades, tens of thousands had their whole life surprised when they were called up to serve in conflicts. They had nothing to do with starting, but everything to do with ending. Surprise is a word that can denote something good or something bad. It's a word like interesting or incredible. It can land either direction, can't it? By definition, it's something unexpected, an astonishing fact or event or thing. So the Columbia River Gorge elections, Veterans Day all have surprise in common. I'd like to add one more thing. How about Thanksgiving? Sarah Josepha Hale, a 70-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, the president on September 28th, 1863, urging him to have the day of our annual Thanksgiving made a national and fixed union festival. Apparently, there were Thanksgiving days celebrated in various states around the country, but nothing specific nationally. She explained, you may have observed that for some years past, there's been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day in all the states. It now needs national recognition and authoritative fixation only to become permanently an American custom and institution. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale's request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors who ignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln, she mentioned that she had been advocating a national Thanksgiving date for 15 years. So Honest Abe did it in the fall of that year, and this is how it reads, and I'm going to read it in its entirety. The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. Here's the surprise. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theater of military conflict. While that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union, needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship. The axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements and the mines as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals have yielded even more abundantly than here too far. And has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield. And the country rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel has devised nor have any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins have nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States and also those who are at sea and those who are subjurning in foreign lands to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. Talk about surprise. This is both. Talk what a deal, but there's more. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly duty him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union. Wow. How do you give thanks in the middle of a war, the worst war in terms of death we have ever experienced, the combined totals of the dead in the civil war, exceed all of the totals for the loss of American life in all of our other wars? Well apparently you choose to see a bigger picture when we have thankful hearts, it is precisely because we see more than what is just in front of us. You've heard me talk about this before, but gratitude equals longevity and health. All scientific studies show that that gratitude is the antidote to the stressors that kill us. Listen to how the psalmist, a thousand years before Jesus, said it Psalm 107, oh give thanks to the Lord for he's good, for his steadfast 11 years forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east, from the west, from the north and from the south. So in wrapping this up I have a suggestion this week, perhaps precisely for Thanksgiving day, but it can be any time, pick up that cell phone and call, call someone you haven't called forever, but for whom you are grateful. Thank them for a moment in time, for a gift given. Thank the person or call the person and thank them for their belief in you as a kid. They believed in you when you didn't believe in yourself. Those are the people that come to my mind. By someone with the gift of your thoughtfulness, your words, how about this, the sound of your voice. I submit, you'll make their day and God himself will cheer. That's it. Have a blessed Thanksgiving day and week and month and rest of the year. Take photos, signing off, I'll catch you later.