Undaunted Courage Thread

Do you remember your college days? Racing your way through the text, with an occasional scribble in the side margins, as if by the very practice you would absorb the information you had so quickly read- or was that just me? So often, my sole purpose for reading the text in college was to receive credit for the course, knowledge was way down on my list of motivators. I remember very little from what I read. Go figure?!!?

My experience with college textbooks reminds me of the following quote by Walt Whitman. He wrote "The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework." Why didn't I think like this in college? When I think of all the time I wasted reading books because I had to rather than because I wanted to I could slap myself upside the head!

Though it is required we hope you will collectively construct, argue, debate and build a framework for understanding the Corp of Discovery, from Monticello to the Pacific coast, not because you have to, but because you want to. Please post your insights regarding Stephen Ambrose’s fabulous text “Undaunted Courage” within this thread.