Ready for Anything, Part 2: Core of Resilience

Like learning, resilience can help us become "Ready for Anything." This week, we continue our look at the Lewis and Clark expedition.  This time, we follow the Corps of Discovery through a few of their numerous trials and setbacks and consider their ability to keep "bouncing forward."

Set out at 4 oClock P.M. in the presence of many of the Neighbouring inhabitents, and proceeded on under a jentle brease up the Missourie to the upper Point of the 1st Island 4 Miles and Camped on the Island which is Situated Close on the right . . .

It sounds easy enough.  Climb into a boat, enjoy a gentle breeze as you bob along the waves, and then settle down to a night of camping on an island in the stream. 

With these words, William Clark paints an almost idyllic picture of the beginning of his expedition with Meriwether Lewis, but he surely knew a trip across the American West would be no picnic, and he was right.  Over the next two years and four months, Lewis, Clark, and the rest of their Corps of Discovery covered nearly 8,000 miles of terrain, some of it treacherous and all of it unfamiliar, while enduring trial after trial, setback after setback, disaster after disaster.

What does it take to pass this kind of test?  As it turns out, the Corps of Discovery was also a Corps of Resilience, and their story can inspire us to develop our own core of resilience, a quality that can help us navigate our own world of trials, setbacks, and disasters.

Up the Missouri

The mighty Missouri River was working against the men from the start.  Originating thousands of miles away in the Rocky Mountains, the Missouri flowed east and then south so that they had to fight the current for thousands of miles — and this was no ordinary river.  It looks relatively mild today, but it was a different beast back in 1804.  Bloated with the waters of half a continent and littered with snags, sandbars, and floating debris, the Missouri was a monster.  Comparing it with the Mississippi, the French explorer Pierre Francois-Xavier de Charlevoix had written: “The two rivers are much the same breadth, each about half a league; but the Missouri is by far the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conqueror . . ."  At times, the men must have felt like the conquered.  Traveling upstream, they resisted this formidable force with little more than poles, rope, and grit.  Planting the poles in the river’s bottom, the men walked from bow to stern, slowly propelling their 55-foot-long keelboat forward against the current, which was about 5 to 6 miles per hour.  Using rope, they sometimes stood on shore and dragged the boat. 

Across the Plains  

After wintering in Fort Mandan (north of present-day Bismarck, North Dakota), the corps set out in April 1805, now with three new travelers: a French-Canadian fur trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau, his wife Sacagawea, and their new baby, Jean-Baptiste.  (Most of us parents know the trials of traveling with small children.  To us, Sacagawea — who was traveling without a car seat, diapers, Gummy Bears, or iPads dishing out endless cartoons — would say, "Cry me a Missouri River."  For more on Sacagawea, see "Surviving for Two" in the March 8 issue of Mind Travel.)

Over the next several months, one or more of the 30 or so members of the Corps of Discovery endured rashes, diarrhea, fleas, and more.  When they discovered that the Missouri River contained not one waterfall (as they had heard), but five, they portaged with their huge, heavy dugout canoes for more than 18 miles over prickly pear cactus and dried buffalo tracks.  The work was so exhausting that, Lewis wrote, "at every halt these poor fellows tumble down and are so much fortigued that many of them are asleep in an instant."  At one point, the sky rained hailstones the size of softballs down on them.

It gets worse.

Lewis and Clark knew that mountains lay ahead, but the extent of these mountains was a mystery.  On August 12, 1805, Lewis wrote that he "did not dispair of shortly finding a passage over the mountains and of taisting the waters of the great Columbia this evening." 

Ah, poor Lewis!  He was no babe in the woods, but he had no way of knowing what lay ahead.  None of them did.

Later that day, he made a terrible discovery, which he described in his journal: "after refreshing ourselves we proceeded on to the top of the dividing ridge from which I discovered immence ranges of high mountains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow."

Crossing the Bitterroot mountain range turned out to be the most grueling portion of the entire journey.  For 11 days, they traveled some 200 miles over treacherous terrain.  "I find myself growing weak for the want of food," Lewis wrote, "and most of the men complain of a similar deficiency and have fallen off very much."  To this figurative fall were added literal falls.  In his journal, Sgt. John Ordway wrote, "Some places So Steep and rockey that Some of our horses fell backwards and roled 20 or 30 feet among the rocks, but did not kill them."

A Wet Winter

Finally, in November 1805, they reached the Pacific Ocean.  There, they had reason to believe, they might encounter a ship, but nothing was sighted for the 105 days the crew wintered there.  What they did see was rain — rain, rain, and more rain.  Of those 105 days, rain fell on 94 of them.  This was the Pacific Northwest after all.  Even the normally stolid Clark was feeling the strain by this time.

Reaching the Pacific was a major achievement, given all they had had to overcome to get there, but, not seeing any ships, they named a spot there "Cape Disappointment."

They had crossed thousands of miles, enduring sickness, bugs, exhaustion, hunger, bitter cold, hail, and snow. 

Now they had to go all the way back.

The Return

The return trip brought more trials, including some of the most dramatic of the entire journey.  When they started toward the mountains again, they found the snow 12 or even 15 feet deep and turned back to secure a guide from one of the tribes. 

Summer brought its own flavor of misery.  In a journal entry dated July 15, Lewis complained: “the musquetoes continue to infest us in such manner that we can scarcely exist . . . they are so numerous that we frequently get them in our thrats as we breath.”

The worst was yet to come.  On July 27, the men caught some Blackfeet trying to steal their guns.  In the fight that ensued, Lewis and his men wound up killing two of the Blackfeet.  Fearful that the survivors might bring down a larger force on his party, Lewis hurried them toward their planned rendezvous point with Clark.  By Lewis’s estimate, the men rode 100 miles before lying down to rest at 2 o’clock in the morning.  Two weeks later, the men still on their way to meet Clark, one of them—Pierre Cruzatte—apparently shot Lewis by mistake, hitting him in the left hip.  The wound left Lewis partially incapacitated for several days.

When the crew finally landed in St. Louis on September 23, 1806, they brought not only a wealth of information about the vast and mysterious American West, but also a story of resounding resilience, one that is still inspiring more than two centuries later.

Steps to Resilience

What was their secret?  What did Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, and the others do or have that empowered them to persevere through trials that might have destroyed less resilient men and women?

We cannot interview any of these explorers, but we can look at some modern advice on building resilience and consider ways we can use this advice to build our own stock of resilience.  Few of us will ever have to haul heavy dugout canoes 18 miles, complete an 11-day crossing of a snow-covered mountain range, or ride 100 miles nonstop in fear for our lives, but resilience can help us persevere through our own hardships and setbacks.

The American Psychological Association offers this definition of resilience: "the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors." 

There's good news, too: you don't have to be born with this resilience.  According to the APA, "resilience involves behaviors, thoughts, and actions that anyone can learn and develop."

There's even better news.  Resilience can help you not only to survive, but also to progress.  In his book The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor observes:

. . . the people who can most successfully get themselves up off the mat are those who define themselves not by what has happened to them, but by what they can make out of what has happened.  These are the people who actually use adversity to find the path forward.  They speak not just of "bouncing back," but of "bouncing forward."

Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, and their fellow explorers were literally moving forward on their journey as they were portaging around the falls on the Missouri River, crossing the Bitterroot Mountains, and overcoming all the other challenges they faced.  It was easy for them to see their progress — easier than it might be for us, but we can remember the progress we are making on our own goals of raising strong children or building a healthy community.

Here are four tips the APA offers for building resilience:

1. "Build your connections."

2. "Foster wellness."

3. "Find purpose."

4. "Embrace healthy thoughts."

We can see signs of some of these practices in the Corps of Discovery.  Lewis and Clark themselves seem to have had a strong connection.  Clark, after all, named his first son "Meriwether Lewis Clark." 

When it came to wellness, the explorers didn't have to work in a daily pilates routine; just moving forward by walking, hauling, poling, and paddling provided more than enough exercise.  Biologist Kenneth Walcheck has written, "The energy needs of a 25-year-old person engaged in strenuous physical labor of the sort endured by members of the Corps of Discovery can reach as high as 6,000 calories per day."  (How many days would it take you to close the "Move" ring on your Apple Watch if you set the goal at 6,000 calories?)

By its very nature, the expedition also had a built-in sense of purpose.  As we saw in last week's column, President Thomas Jefferson had high expectations for the Corps of Discovery.  The men were trying to locate a Northwest Passage, collect information about the flora and fauna, map a huge swath of the American West, and establish positive relations with the indigenous tribes they encountered.  The work that Lewis and Clark in particular did day after day — keeping detailed journals, collecting specimens, and so on — kept their purpose constantly before them.

What about the "healthy thoughts"?  We don't have direct access to those thoughts, of course, but we do have the journals, and they tell a story of the mental lives of the co-commanders.  Next time, we will examine these mental lives — specifically, the men's composure.

Until then, I encourage you to use connections, wellness, purpose, and "healthy thoughts" to develop your own core of resilience.

That way, when the proverbial raindrops — or the softball-sized hailstones — begin to fall, you'll be ready for anything.