Column: Mall walking makes me feel akin to great explorer

During a different era, Capt. Meriwether Lewis might have been a gifted mall walker.

There are gaggles of us out there who do it daily — without the slightest intention of shopping for goods (what is shopping, anyway?).

I admit it. I’m a mall walker, and lots of you are too. We share a common pastime: miles of glistening travertine floors in 72 climate-controlled degrees of perfection with Giuseppe Verdi blaring over the mall’s sound system.

I was a devotee of Dr. Kenneth Cooper, and an avid runner — never jogger — for more than 20 years. I never imagined that in my “Golden Years” I’d be elbowing mall crowds just to stay in shape.

It seems cheeky.

Having recently become a soccer fan — my 18-year-old grandson is an accomplished player — I’ve learned the rudiments of a “running clock.” Unlike football and basketball, soccer has a clock that never stops and counts up rather than down. The 30th minute of a soccer match is actually 29:01 to 30:00.

Therefore, according to soccer logic, at 72 years of age I’m forced to round up. That makes me 80.

Exercise is my last best option.

Born with two family surnames — his mother was Lucy Meriwether — Meriwether Lewis loved to walk and was quite good at it.

You remember Meriwether of the little Exploring the Louisiana Purchase and Searching for a Northwest Passage ensemble, don’t you? He was a protégé of President Thomas Jefferson.

Meriwether was the “Lewis” of the duo Lewis and Clark.

Does anyone in our culture today below the age of oh, 125, know anything of Lewis and Clark? Sadly, not many.

Conceived by Jefferson, their dangerous mission was designed to establish an American bridgehead in the Northwest Territory below the 49th parallel before Britain or another European power could step in to claim it. There were scientific and economic considerations as well.

The expedition departed St. Charles on the Missouri River, near St. Louis (FYI: they left before the Rams bailed for L.A.), and traversed surging rivers, plunging cataracts, roiling rapids, massive buffalo herds, fertile plains, rich bottomlands, breathtaking escarpments, magnificent peaks, sweeping valleys, parched deserts, and the continental divide, to reach the Pacific Ocean and the mouth of the Columbia River.

The excursion to the Pacific and back ran from May 1804 to September 1806.

Lewis and Clark and nearly four-dozen other men began the journey up the Missouri aboard a 55-foot keelboat — are you old enough to remember Disney’s 1950s keelboat captain, Mike Fink? — and two smaller canoes. Later, other craft were employed.

Clark spent most of his time on the keelboat charting the course and making maps. Lewis was frequently ashore carrying out Jefferson’s mandate to study the geography and the lay of the land; and to observe and procure samples of the animals, soil and plant life.

What Lewis did particularly well was walk the land that became America’s northwest — up to 30 miles a day. That’s a heck of a daily mall walk. The keelboat would frequently depart early without him (there was no I-90 at the time), and Lewis would — without electronic communication — meet up with it at the end of the day on a wooded shore, sandbar or river island.

That beats my slog from Bloomingdale’s to Nordstrom.

Lewis frequently made his ramble alone or with his faithful Newfoundland pup. The walks, at the very least, were dangerous. The territory was vast and uncharted. Thankfully, I’ve never had to worry about grizzlies at Crystal Court.

Lewis and Clark, perhaps as much as any two other Americans, influenced the direction of this nation.

What if they’d failed?

Stephen Ambrose in his book, “Undaunted Courage,” considers that possibility. Lewis and Clark could easily have died or been killed en route. Without them, exploration of the region would have been delayed and possibly carried out by others — not Americans. And, the Upper Louisiana land — Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and perhaps even Oregon and Washington — could have become Lower Alberta.

Without L&C, American history might have been very different.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.