At Grinder's Stand

A reflection on the grave of Meriwether Lewis

Immaturus obi: sed tu felicior annos Vive meos, Bona Republica!
“I died too soon—but you, live out my years, Good Republic!”
-Epitaph on Meriwether Lewis’s grave

I have stood here several times in the quiet cedar brake off the Natchez Trace,
The obelisk’s shaft broken clean – a promising life cut short.
One cannot comprehend why two cracks split the autumn dark at Grinder’s Stand:
Pistol fire that stilled the courage undaunted of young Meriwether Lewis.

Meriwether - son of rivers wild and western prairie wind, who chased the Pacific’s
Edge with Clark and mapped the unknown with compass, courage and ink.
Yet something haunted him on the journey, something he could never relent,
And here in Tennessee he lies and we grieve for a life so early spent.

The broken column defies the forest’s green reclaim, a sentinel for all who
Journey and do not return the same; the question that trails explorers into
The dark – what price the map, what cost the dawn unclaimed?
I listen for the footsteps faint, the Corps of Discovery’s echo fading.

Yet, there is a strange arithmetic in graves: what closed for him at this
Column, opened for me.  I read the broken stone like the head of the trail,
Not the end of one.  I turned west toward the Missouri, across the plains and 
Into the Rockies; because a man died here and showed me the way.

It’s a haunting place, the Meriwether Lewis National Memorial. It’s about 40-miles south of Nashville on the Natchez Trace Parkway and I have driven there and cycled there several times. I think it is why Stephen Ambrose’s “Undaunted Courage” hit me so hard, but it also inspired me to take time each summer and follow sections of the Lewis and Clark Expedition trail. When you are out there in the “great unknown” as John Wesley Powell called the unexplored spaces he pursued, you cannot help but admire the giants that came before us. What haunted Lewis and drove him to suicide (the consensus of historians) we will never know. But, if you get the chance, it’s worth the visit to pay that young man some respect.