Keeping in Touch

​Dorothy Hinshaw Patent
Nature's Animal Ambassador

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     ​How often do you check your cell phone or email each day?  Use Twitter or Facebook?  Can you stand not to “stay in touch” for even one day?  We’re used to being able to hear from people anywhere in the world at any time, with just a few taps on a keyboard or telephone pad.

    Through most of human history people could only communicate when they were within shouting distance.  When alphabets came along, our ancestors could create messages on stone or wood and later on parchment (made from animal skin), or paper, made from wood pulp.  Then, of course, the message had to get from one person to another by way of a messenger.  When public mail came along, it made that process much easier and more reliable.

    That’s where things stood for a long time.  Imagine being a soldier in 1804 joining explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their epic trek across the west to the Pacific Coast.  This was territory almost totally unknown at the time to European Americans.

    You’ve left behind your family and all your friends.  Now you have no way of finding out what happened to those dear to you.  Did your father or mother die?  Did a sister get married?  How many babies were born?  Your loved ones get to be a bit luckier, since in the spring of 1805, the keel boat that carried the expedition to Indian villages for the winter is sent back down the Missouri River with a small crew, and you get a chance to write notes to your loved ones, reassuring them that you are okay.

    A lot can happen during a 2½ year span like the one endured by members of the expedition!  Finally, in September of 1806, you and your colleagues return to the St. Louis area and find out that most people assumed you were all dead.  Now you must figure out as quickly as possible how to reconnect with family and friends.  It won’t be easy, since they don’t know you are alive, and you don’t know where they are after so long.  How can you even locate everyone you care about?

    Think about it: If you didn’t have email or a phone of any kind, whose messages would you miss the most?  And who would you most wish you could tell about these events in your life?

The Lewis and Clark Expedition followed the Missouri River through miles and miles of vast prairie like this one, full of amazing wild animals like these bison.

This postage stamp honors the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition. And, no, they could not have used a stamp on a letter to send news home. The first US postage stamps weren't issued until 1847.

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Dorothy has written about how the horse changed the lives of the Plains Indians and everything that followed.

Dorothy Hinshaw Patent is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom,a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam.  Click here to find out more.

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MLA 8 Citation
Patent, Dorothy Hinshaw. "Keeping in Touch." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 4 Oct. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/keeping-in-touch.

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