Not Home for the Holidays

Lewis and Clark Journals, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.1806-01-01

Celebrating with family and friends is the most meaningful part of the holiday season, but what do you do if you can’t find your way home? How do you deal with homesickness? Today we can make a phone call, text, and even easily video chat with our loved ones. In the past however, often the only recourse was putting pen to paper.

Meriwether Lewis couldn’t write a letter to his loved ones on New Year’s Day, 1806. He was with the rest of the Corps of Discovery at the newly constructed Fort Clatsop, literally a continent away from most of his friends and family. He was certainly nowhere near a post office. Lewis did the next best thing for his homesickness…channeled it into a journal entry. His text reads:

January 1, 1806

This morning I was awoke at an early hour by the discharge of a volley of small arms, which were fired by our party in front of our quarters to usher in the new year; this was the only mark of rispect which we had it in our power to pay this celebrated day. our repast of this day tho' better than that of Christmass, consisted principally in the anticipation of the 1st day of January 1807, when in the bosom of our friends we hope to participate in the mirth and hilarity of the day, and when the zest given by the recollection of the present, we shall completely, both mentally and corporally, enjoy the repast which the hand of civilization has prepared for us. at present we were content with eating our boiled Elk and wappetoe, and solacing our thirst with our only beverage pure water. two of our hunters who set out this morning reterned in the evening having killed two bucks elk; they presented Capt. Clark and myself each a marrow-bone and tonge, on which we suped.

Lewis did indeed get to “enjoy the repast which the hand of civilization has prepared” on New Year’s Day 1807. He spent that holiday at the renowned table of Francophile Thomas Jefferson along with fellow guest of honor and Mandan leader, Sheheke-shote. Boiled elk surely was not on the menu.

Writing can act as an emotional release. So can daydreaming about the future. Lewis used both to combat his homesickness at Fort Clatsop. Both options are still used by people today, along with many other ways to keep in touch with friends and family at special times of the year.