Toast to the Keelboat Muskrat as it Leaves Hermann, MO

  

 

Toast offered on the banks of the Missouri River at Hermann, MO on October 11, 2023, upon the formal disbanding of the Muskrat Society, by Paul Fennewald, who was part of the original crew for a short part of the Keelboat Muskrat journey.

"We are gathered here on the bank of the Missouri River, where our interaction with the keelboat Muskrat, in the form of what eventually became the Muskrat Society, began this month 4 years ago. For all intents and purposes, it is fitting we end it here as well. But in a larger picture, this great pathway to the west which we call the Missouri River has seen many, many stories, with ours being rather insignificant compared to many of those stories, some of which had happy ending, and some not so much. Fortunes have been made on this river, and fortunes have also been lost. The fertile valleys cradling this waterway has fed our nation. Great explorers and frontiersmen of note, such as Lewis & Clark, John Colter, Manuel Lisa, William Ashley, Jim Bridger, and many others, passed by this very spot over the ages.

While our story re the keelboat Muskrat is not ending as many of us would have liked, it still is a great story, and part of the overall fabric of who each of us are. And in the larger story of Ashley’s Return and the keelboat Muskrat, we were a very important part of that story. We kept it alive for a critical 4 years, allowing the Muskrat to finally find a permanent resting place, where it is being used to educate our children on things that are important. I for one feel it was a positive experience, and filled a space in my life, not duplicated in any other way. I’ve made some new lifelong friends, and in some ways saw both the good and the bad in human character and what people stand for. I hope I am better for it.

As we lift our libation to offer a toast, let us offer the toast to the life of this river, which touched and help sustain so many lives, from Native Americans, to the first French trappers and explorers, to the mountain men, keelboat and steamboat men, farmers, and others. May our children, and our children’s children, for the foreseeable future, wet their feet in this river, and gaze out across it’s flowing waters, watching new things come into view, and all too soon, drifting out of sight, much like life itself. And may seeing its flowing waters always wet their appetite for adventure, as it has all these many years for so many before.

Cheers!"