Tracking Lewis and Clark — from the air
‘Flight of Discovery’ realizes Purdue grad’s dream

Photo by Brian Forrest Poised for takeoff, Flight of Discovery pilots aligned their aircraft for a unique group photo at the Clarksville, Ind., airport on June 1, 2004.

Mike Harding, BS ’76, sat at the end of the runway at the Clark County (Ind.) airport, anxiously going through the preflight checklist before takeoff.

His heart was racing as he throttled up his single-engine Cessna 182. Ahead of him was 5,500 feet of grooved, black asphalt, an endless blue sky and a dream that was three years in the making. Behind him, both literally and figuratively, were 30 men and women, adventurers, all, who had bought into his dream.

Their goal, on the 200th anniversary of the most ambitious scientific journey in the history of America, was to follow in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark. Only this time, Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery would be the Flight of Discovery.

It was June 1, 2004. It had taken Harding five days to reach Clarksville. Who could have figured that this small Indiana town on the Ohio River would be the transcendent point of Harding’s life?

The Cessna had delivered Harding 2,000 miles from his home in San Diego. He had hopscotched his way east, dodging an endless string of gully-washing rains and roof-raising tornadoes.

All across the country on his journey to the Flight of Discovery starting point, Harding had watched from a cruising altitude of 3,000 feet as the rains made streams look like rivers and rivers look like lakes. Even the mighty Ohio looked bigger and badder than Harding ever remembered, clogged with reminders of last year’s crops and yesterday’s fast food wrappers.

But on this cobalt blue Tuesday morning, all of the bad weather vanished. The sky above was as soft and clear as a child’s promise.

He took a deep breath and advanced the throttle to lift the plane into the sky. All things Mike Harding dared to dream were not only possible, they were coming true.

An erosion control consultant known throughout the West as “The Mud Guy,” Harding had assembled a team of 31 pilots, scientists, family (his wife, Carol Forrest, and son, Lee, played integral roles on the team) and friends as members of the Flight of Discovery team.

Over the first 13 days of June, using seven airplanes and two helicopters, the Flight of Discovery team traced the footsteps of American explorers Lewis and Clark from an altitude of 1,500 feet. The 2004 flight was the first phase of an ambitious three-year project to document 200 years of environmental change along the route of the Corps of Discovery.

Flight of Discovery covered 3,601 nautical miles, beginning in the skies above Harding’s native Hoosier state and ending at the very edge of the continent, where the Pacific Ocean collides with the Oregon coast.
Harding didn’t choose Indiana as the starting point for Flight of Discovery simply because he was born in Muncie, grew up in Indianapolis and was schooled at Purdue University, although he admits those were factors in the decision.

Historians list St. Louis as the starting point of Lewis and Clark’s epic journey. But the two explorers met in Indiana, near Clarksville, before heading west.

“Plus, as the leader of this expedition, I can choose the starting point,” Harding jokes. But the displaced Hoosier (he says he is a Californian only in geographic terms) cannot forget his Indiana roots. Starting the Flight of Discovery in Indiana was Harding’s “tip of the wing” to his parents, his grandfather, and to his Hoosier youth.

“I’ve been many places in my life,” says Harding, “but Indiana still means a lot to me. My grandfather, Lee Rambo, farmed ground along many of the rivers in southern Indiana — the Big Blue, Sugar Creek, the Brandywine and the Flat Rock. Growing up on farms in Decatur, Bartholomew and Shelby counties, I think I’ve always had a connection with rivers.”

The Flight of Discovery team included Purdue agronomy professor Bill McFee, who remembers Harding as a student who stood out for his approach to student projects.

“He was very enthusiastic,” McFee recalls. “He was a good organizer who could convince you he could make the world stop and rotate backwards for a while. He was very convincing.”

Apparently. With just one phone call, Harding convinced McFee to join the Flight of Discovery project. Unfortunately, McFee was scheduled to escort some Purdue students through Hungary and Romania in June and was unable to participate in the 2004 flight.

“I would have loved to participate,” says McFee, who owns and flies his own plane and hopes to participate more actively in future Flight of Discovery projects.

“Our objective was to use current technology to compare present-day cultural, environmental and anthropological resources to the 200-year-old

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