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OUTWARD BOUND Historian Stephen Ambrose .
traces Lewis and Clark?s trail and comes back with a surprise bestseller tf'l
A ?It?s the camping expedition of all time,? says Ambrose (with wife Moira in Meriwether Canyon) of Lewis and Clark?s journey.
Hiking a pristine stretch of the Lewis and Clark trail along Montana?s rugged Missouri River breaks?part of a summer journey he has made for the last 20 years?historian Stephen Ambrose is transported to another time. ?You don?t see power lines,? he marvels. ?You don?t see bridges or ranches. You see what the explorers saw.? Ambrose?s vivid retelling of Lewis and Clark?s journey?Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West?caps a distinguished literary career that includes the 1994 bestseller D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. Clearly the new book?s unexpected success (16 weeks on the The New
Photographs by Acey Harper
York Times bestseller list, last week at No. 6) delights him. Surrounded by the maps, photographs, antique muskets and presidential portraits that fill his red, white and blue office above the garage of his Bay St. Louis, Miss., house, Ambrose, 60, can scarcely contain his glee. ?It?s wonderful,? he declares. ?I?m sitting in clover!? And he lays his success squarely?and literally?at the explorers? feet (mainly those of Lewis, whom he considers the more colorful of the two men). ?I?ve walked every step of that trail,? he says. ?I?ve made wakes [on the river] where Lewis made wakes,
< Ambrose is convinced that Meriwether Lewis (left), who killed himself at age 35, ?was a textbook manic-depressive.?
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