THE ZOOT CHRONICLES

INTRODUCTION

It all started as an intention to post a blog from the road when we went to Montana last month. I've been wanting to say something about the biodiesel experiment our household has been conducting for the past several months, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to juxtapose some dry facts and numbers with a story. Then, as inevitably happens when on the road, our own story coincided with the greater story-- first the geographic, and then the historic.

It was while I was having breakfast at the Raven Cafe in downtown Missoula one morning, that I happened to run into Lewis & Clark. Starting from almost total ignorance about who they were and what their expedition did, it became increasingly clear that there was a continuity between their story and our own. I discovered that our paths would coincide, separated as they were by two centuries.

When that company of thirty three people crossed western North America in the first few years of the 19th Century, it was a land of seemingly unlimited possibilities. It was The Garden-- where all life came from-- and it would always provide. It may have been feast or famine, but the idea of humans depleting nature's stores was inconceivable to them. Now, as the 21st Century unfolds, the frontier has withdrawn up to Alaska, the atmosphere is shrinking, the polluted waters are rising, and humans living here are being forced to confront some very real limits. The explorers of today aren't discovering any new land out there, but rather, new ways of living sustainably on the land that's right here. The modern pioneers are the first ones to actually adopt the new ways in their daily lives.

So-- whether your interests lie in the history of the American West through the eyes of the Lewis & Clark expedition, it's future through the ongoing saga of our conversion from petroleum use to a renewable biofuel for transportation, or merely keeping up with the McSpencers-- I hope you all can find something to enjoy in reading The Zoot Chronicles.

Dave Earpson
Santa Cruz, California
April 28, 2006

{This is a work in progress. Any comments, questions, constructive criticism, relevant links, &tc. can be sent to: corvid33@yahoo.com }

(this version ✍ 050806)