THE ZOOT CHRONICLES

PART ONE ☝ Montana Return

It's getting down to the line here. I've been staying in this room at the Doubletree Edgewater Hotel in Missoula, Montana-- whose sliding glass door opens onto a patio beside the rocky bank of the Clark Fork River-- since I arrived after midnight Sunday night. Ninety some odd hours of solitude used to seem like plenty of time to get a lot of stuff done-- all the things I've been putting off doing while the seemingly more urgent tasks of everyday life have taken precedence. Things like writing, for instance. But the time has largely been taken up with recovery from my solo drive out here from the San Francisco Bay. I took fifty six hours to cover twelve hundred miles, spending two nights in cheap motels in Redding, and The Dalles. The necessities of paying off the sleep debt and detoxifying from the fast food I had to settle for on the road, while keeping blood sugar levels in the acceptable range without ordering room service too much, as well as getting the gear organized, provisions acquired, weather monitored, and route planned for the return to the west coast, didn't leave much extra time. So now, I have just four hours before I need to be at the airport to pick up Cristina. And the stress I feel over this phase of the journey coming to an end before I feel ready to move on, is far outweighed by my eager anticipation of seeing my beloved partner again, and of embarking on an adventure that will take us from the Continental Divide back down to the coast, and through the Spring Equinox-- our second anniversary-- back to the home we share in Santa Cruz.



Outside the window, the Clark Fork River descends from a pass between the snow covered mountains, at the front of which is Mount Sentinel, whose pyramid-like treeless western face has been decorated with a giant "M" by the University whose campus sits at its foot. I read that during the last ice age, Mount Sentinel was a tiny island in a two thousand foot deep glacial lake that filled the Bitterroot Valley. An ice dam burst, and cataclysmic floods drained the lake in just forty eight hours-- floodwaters racing west across sixteen hundred square miles at sixty five miles per hour, changing the landscape of the northwest forever. Until it happened again-- which it did about a hundred times in the last ice age. When I arrived, I put a plastic bottle of drinking water out on the patio, as a crude thermometer. Twice I've found it frozen solid. The night it snowed, it didn't freeze, though--and the snow didn't really stick to the rocks of the riverbank, either. Although it's liquid now, it still feels pretty cold out there, under cloudy skies.

In this rather luxurious hotel room, heated to a comfortable seventy degrees, off road equipment is set about the floor, in somewhat organized groupings. There are four olive drab plastic five gallon gerry cans which currently contain 15 gallons of B100 biodiesel fuel. A blue metal gerry can contains five gallons of drinking water, and the vehicle recovery equipment from the roof rack is laid out on a tarp: shovel, Hi-Lift jack, Pull-Pall land anchor, etc. When the hotel worker who brought in the breakfast tray saw it all the first morning, he said, "Looks like you're digging a hole." I thought of joking about robbing a bank-- but realized he might think I was a terrorist or something, and went with the truth-- "No, I'm just hoping to not get stuck in a hole. This is all four-wheeling equipment-- I'm having my Jeep worked on at AEV." No recognition. College age kid, hefty, white bred, small town look. "Well, I used to have to inventory Humvees, so I know what a pain that can be," he said. "Yeah I bet," I replied, " I guess it's not quite so bad when it's your own stuff instead of the Army's." I wasn't able to take the conversation in the military direction any more than I would've been able to talk sports if he'd brought up how the University basketball team just took the title for the first time in something like thirty years the day before; that from the front page headline of the thin local paper that arrived a few minutes before breakfast. But get me going about vehicles, and you might be there for awhile.

The reason that the apex of this road trip is in Montana is because of a particular vehicle, the diesel Jeep Liberty I've had for the past eight months, or fifteen thousand miles, that I just decided on this road trip to name, "Zoot". It was while crossing from California into Oregon on Interstate 5, listening to the Studio One reggae song, "Small Garden" by Zoot Sims, that I thought I remembered a character from Monty Python & The Holy Grail who introduced herself as "Zoot". But what clinched it was when I looked up Zoot Allures, the 1976 Frank Zappa album, on the internet. It said, "The title is a pun on the French expression 'Zut alors!' which, though it has no direct translation, conveys mild surprise and may be approximated by 'Darn it!' or by the British use of 'Blimey!'," which is approximately the reaction people have when they realize that this Jeep runs on vegetable oil. I would hasten to add that it's a positive exclamation, as one might overhear, "Damn!" escape from the lips of people at a car show as they consider the awe-inspiring machines on display.

When Rudolph Diesel fired up one of his first compression ignition engines at the Paris expo in 1900, it ran on peanut oil. As the story goes, people were drawn into the tent where it was operating by the smell, thinking it was a food pavillion. In fact, the engine would operate on just about any oil for fuel-- whether derived from vegetable, animal, or petroleum sources. Diesel chose peanut oil because a farmer friend of his had a crop that had gone rancid, so he got it at a good price. But ever since the 1920's, oil companies have produced the cheapest fuel in the form of petroleum diesel, and the diesel engine has become synonymous with the dirty, carcinogenic soot that then comes from its exhaust pipe. Being the most efficient internal combustion engine humans have yet come up with-- in terms of the ratio of fuel economy to power output-- the twentieth century saw the world's transportation industry become as dependent on the diesel engine for its ships and trains and trucks, as the petroleum that's fueled it. But as we've become increasingly aware in the past thirty years or so, not only are we killing the planet-- and ourselves-- with the pollution from burning fossil fuels, but they're fast running out. Health concerns are easy to deny-- their effects aren't usually apparent for years-- and environmental concerns even more so, usually taking generations to manifest. Things are increasing exponentially now, but the pace of self-destruction isn't what's traditionally motivated people to demand change-- especially in America. It's the ever increasing price of petroleum that's caused a more immediate interest in alternative fuels. And lo and behold-- the same diesel engine that has become so important in keeping the wheels of our civilization turning, will actually still run on vegetable oil for fuel-- either from virgin crops or recycled cooking oil. Not only is it a renewable fuel, able to be produced domestically in a way that supports farmers, it pollutes far less than petroleum, is better for the engine itself, and unlike any other type of fuel, it can be made in one's home, independent of any corporation.

Since engine manufacturers have designed their products-- specifically the fuel injectors-- to use the less viscous petroleum diesel fuel, to run a modern diesel engine on vegetable oil requires modifying either the engine or the fuel. For the engine, it's a simple preheater to thin out the oil; and for the fuel, it's the processing of the oil by adding methanol or ethanol, and potassium or sodium hydroxide, which catalyzes a reaction that causes the glycerin to drop out of suspension, effectively thinning the oil. The catalysts are then removed, and the finished product is known as "biodiesel". B100 is 100% processed vegetable oil, but since biodiesel can be blended in any proportion with petroleum diesel, B20 (which contains 80% petroleum diesel) is a popular blend. Blended biodiesel minimizes some of the predictable drawbacks of "neat" biodiesel, as straight B100 is also known. They include thickening at a higher temperature than petroleum (gelling usually starts around 30°F, which is aout 20° higher than pure petrioluem diesel, B50 falling somewhere in between); and since it's such a good solvent, B100 will dissolve petroleum deposits in the tank and fuel lines, as well as paint and natural rubber. But those seemed like such small things, given the big picture, when it came time last year to get a new vehicle. I wanted one that would run just as happily the day after the planet is depleated of fossil fuels, as the day before-- when prices are really crazy.

While Chrysler has put their version of the new generation of highly efficient small diesel engines-- which they call "CRD"s for "Common Rail Diesel"s, in their line in Europe and on other continents since the turn of the twenty-first century, last year was the first that they were offered to the North American market. Europe has been much more proactive in transitioning from gasoline to diesel fueled vehicles-- due to a more evolved environmental consciousness, as well as higher fuel prices (which are due in part to taxes that have gone towards pollution controls and the development of an alternative renewable fuels industry). Germany-- Diesel's birthplace-- still leads the way, with VW selling many more TDI engines (which stands for "Turbo Direct Injection", a design similar to the CRD) in Eurpoe than gasoline versions. Besides pickup trucks which have larger engines, the most likely newer passenger vehicles to be seen on American roads powered by diesels are from VW and Mercedes. The Japanese produce a significant proportion of their line with diesels domestically as well, and export them to Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa and South America. We just don't get them here in North America.

The demand here was stunted by some poorly designed diesel engines made by U.S. automakers in response to the oil crisis in the 1970's, and the way diesels have traditionally produced more of the noxious particulate emissions that are obvious to our senses. The California Air resources board went so far as to have new diesel passenger vehicles banned in California in 2002 (leaving trucks and used vehicles unaffected). But these new engines are different-- injecting highly pressurized fuel from a common fuel rail directly into the cylinders (instead of outside the valves as in the traditional diesel engine design), so that it burns much more efficiently for better mileage as well as fewer emissions. In Europe they're now adding a particulate filter to remove the soot, and a catalytic converter to remove nitrogen oxides (the only classifications of pollutants that diesels produce more of than gasoline engines). The fact that the U.S. will be mandating the use of low-sulfer diesel fuel this year (as they've long since done in Europe), means that catalytic converters can be installed or retrofitted on American diesels to remove the NOX gasses now-- whose catalysts would have previously been destroyed by the sulfer in the fuel. So hopefully the more advanced technology being produced over in Europe will begin reaching our shores here in America in greater prevalence in the coming years.

For now, there's only one choice of a small diesel powered sport utility vehicle in the U.S., in the form of the Jeep Liberty CRD-- a descendant of the Cherokee, as it's still known in Europe. Not as bare bones as the classic Jeep Wrangler, but also not as excessive as the Grand Cheroke, the interior of the Liberty proved to be the most comfortable vehicle I'd test driven-- especially as the upright driving position affected my bad hip. It was the most genuinely capable off road vehicle in it's stock form of any I had considered, and the opportunity to run it on biodiesel made it the best of all worlds. At the same time dealers in North America started taking orders for the Liberty CRD's, I found out about American Expedition Vehicles in Missoula, a company that modifies Jeeps to make them more capable off road. Their logo is a buffalo, winding up for a charge. While they mainly worked with the standard Wrangler platform, adding larger wheels and tires, suspension lifts, air locking differentials, armor and recovery equipment-- and in the case of the Brute, a huge Hemi engine and full size OEM looking pickup truck bed-- they had never experimented with the Liberty before. They were, however, at least partially as excited to get a paid-for prototype to work with, as I was to get a professionally done conversion that wouldn't void the factory warranty.

So after being built in Toledo, Ohio almost exactly a year ago, Zoot was shipped via rail and truck to AEV's workshop in Missoula, where a 2.5 inch suspension lift for increased ground and tire clearance, custom wheels and larger all terrain tires, air locking differentials (whose compressor would also be able to refill tire pressure reduced for traversing sand or mud), rock rails, skidplates, and a few other miscelaneous Mopar accessories were installed. But as much as I've enjoyed every mile-- and as good as I feel about ten thousand of them being driven without burning any petroleum-- something has been missing. The Bull Bar-- a heavy duty powdercoated steel front bumper that includes a winch, off road driving lights, recovery and jacking points, and has been referred to as a "beautiful battering ram"-- was not available for the 2005 Liberty when we flew up to Missoula to take delivery of Zoot last summer. The company that makes them in Australia, ARB, finally got one out to AEV in Montana this past January. So as soon as enough of the winter had passed to give a better chance for Missoula not being TOO ridiculously cold, and some vacation time came around, it was time to get on the road again.




But while that may explain the reason behind the eastbound trip, the return west is another story altogether. After she flies in tonight, Cristina and I will spend one last night at the Edgewater, and tomorrow morning we'll get Zoot loaded up, have one last adjustment done by AEV, and head west over Highway 12. We'll be crossing the Montana/Idaho border at Lolo Pass, and on across the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho to a bed and breakfast inn on the cliffs above the Snake River, just across the Washington state line. I wanted to take this route, because as a secondary highway I figured 12 would be more interesting than Interstate 90 that connects Missoula with Coeur d'Alene, Idaho-- which I'd already seen both going and coming. But when I crossed the relatively lower pass over the Bitterroots on Interstate 90 Sunday night, the Thermometer got as low as 14 degrees. I was running pure dinosaur-diesel at that point, due to lack of availability of biodiesel in the areas I was passing through-- instead of B50 as I'd planned to for the sake of the temperature. But even petroleum diesel gels at some point uncomfortably close to there. Luckily it wasn't snowing-- I was very lucky with weather the whole eastbound trip. I had to stick to the Interstate due to huge storms passing through the region and uncertain road conditions in the Sierras and Cascades, but basically drove up the slot of clear weather between systems. That luck isn't guaranteed to continue, though, and as I've monitored the NOAA weather report it's evolved into a situation where we'll be trying to get over the high pass up at the border before a storm dumps a couple feet of snow on the Bitterroots. While the Interstate might seem like a better choice in a storm, there's one factor that makes it very difficult to not take Highway 12. I found out this morning that it was the route that Lewis & Clark took to cross westbound from the Continental Divide in September of 1805, and again on their return east in June of 1806.

I admit to not knowing too much about Lewis & Clark prior to this week. Maybe it would've been different if I'd grown up in Pacific Northwest schools instead of those in former Spanish territory down in Southern California, but when I caught sight of a shiny new 2005 nickel in my change at the Raven Cafe where I went for breakfast the other morning, with a modernized closeup profile of Thomas Jefferson on the front with the cursive word "Liberty", and a view down the Oregon coastline on the back, with the quote, "Ocean in view! O! the joy!", and "Lewis & Clark 1805", I didn't remember what the connection was between Lewis and Clark and Jefferson. But if the bicentennial of their expedition reaching the Pacific occurred last year, I figured there was bound to be some information on the internet about them. I wasn't disappointed in the amount of websites that a simple Googling yielded, and by comparing a few of them, the holes began to get filled in.

Meriwether Lewis had been a lifelong acquaintance of Thomas Jefferson, having been born near Monticello (Jefferson's Virginia estate) in 1774. He entered a career in military service, and rose to the rank of captain by the time he was twenty six. Within a year, the newly elected President Jefferson asked Lewis to be his personal secretary, and when he needed an Army officer to lead an expedition to the Pacific, Lewis was chosen. He had actually been dreaming of exploring beyond the western frontier for years. Initially planned as a scientific expedition beyond the United States' western border, the route would pass through the largely uncharted Louisiana Territory claimed by the French, between Spanish claims to the south, and British to the north. It's primary objective was to find a "Northwest Passage" between the headwaters of the Missouri River east of the Continental Divide, and the Columbia River to the west, thereby opening up a water route for commerce between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean-- and hence Europe and the Far East. Establishing diplomatic and trade relationships with the Native American nations was a secondary objective, and the success of the mission-- even their very survival-- would depend on receiving assistance from the tribes whose land they would pass through.

Jefferson's interest in acquiring knowledge of the resources and native peoples of the west as well as the geography led to Lewis being sent to Philadelphia, where he received training as a naturalist and ethnographer. He studied botany, zoology, mineralogy, astronomy, anatomy and medicine, as well as how to use celestial navigation to determine latitude and longitude. Lewis was given funding to recruit and equip a unit to be known as the "Corps of Discovery", and he chose William Clark-- a former commanding officer and friend, four years his senior, to help him lead the expedition. Clark's expertise lay in more pracical matters than the academic ones Lewis was being trained in; he had experience negotiating with Indians-- as well as fighting with them. And he was more of an expert in geography and navigation-- which were important skills both to get the Corps across an uncharted continent and back home again, and also to record data and observations that would allow the creation of the most accurate map yet of the west. The bulk of the expedition was comprised of U.S. army soldiers, along with some French boatmen and interpreters. Clark brought along his lifelong companion York, an African American slave he had inherited, and at some point Lewis acquired a dog, a large black Newfoundland named Seaman.

Then in the spring of 1803, the Louisiana Purchase occurred, and the United States now "owned" the vast area of North America the French used to claim, and had a clear path to the as yet undefined borders of the Pacific coastline in the Oregon Country. But except for some British and American ships that had explored and charted the area where the Columbia River enters the Pacific in the early 1790's, nearly all the land between the Mississippi and the Pacific in those middle latitudes of North America was off the map. In one of the original-- and certainly the most epic-- American off-road adventures, the Corps of Discovery set out in keelboats from Camp DuBois, where St. Louis now sits on the Mississippi River, on May 14th, 1804. They entered the waters of the Missouri River, rowing upstream beyond the edge of the known world, past the point where they wouldn't return for two and a half years.

By October 25th, 1804, the expedition had traveled sixteen hundred miles up the Missouri, into the middle of the present state of North Dakota, when the river began to freeze. They built a winter encampment among the Mandan tribe, which is where they hired another interpreter, the French Canadian trader Toussant Charbonneau, who had two wives from the Shoshone tribe of the northern Rockies. One of them, Sacagawea, had been captured from her people three years earlier when she would have been thirteen, by a Hidatsa war party; she had been enslaved, taken as a wife by a Hidatsa warrior, and then lost in a bet to Charbonneau. The captains decided to hire her as well, to interpret and act as intermediary with the tribes of the Rockies, whose assistance they would need if they were going to survive the trek across the Rocky Mountains and back, if there was no easy portage. The fact that she was pregnant that winter-- and gave birth on February 11th, 1805, at Fort Mandan with the assistance of the captains, to a baby boy they named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau-- might have been seen as a hindrance to a transcontinental expedition. But not only would Sacagawea's connection to the people and diplomatic skills help the mission greatly, the mere fact that they were traveling with a woman and baby removed the perception that they were a war party. Having an African American-- a race never before seen by even the natives who had encountered European trappers and traders before-- as well as a boatman who played the fiddle named Pierre Cruzatte, the son of a French Canadian father and an Omaha mother-- must have also helped in breaking the ice.

When the ice on the Missouri River had finally broken up enough to allow the expedition to continue, on April 7th, 1805, the thirty three people who would actually make it to the Pacific and back set out. There were the two captains, three sergeants, twenty three privates, three interpreters including Sacagawea, the baby that Clark nicknamed Pomp, York the slave, Seaman the dog, and whatever other pack animals they had at that point. The prairie dog they had spent a whole day capturing, along with four magpies, a grouse, their maps and journals up to that point, and all the expedition members designated to return after the first winter-- or court marshaled and dishonorably discharged for stealing whiskey, desertion, or in one case, making "mutinous expressions"-- headed back down the Missouri to St. Louis in one of the boats. One deserter, a Frenchman named "La Liberté", was never caught. And everyone else headed upriver. It would be one hundred and fifty six days later, after both the acknowledgment of some harsh realities and some incredibly good luck, that they would be arriving in the Bitterroot Valley.

By comparing the map of Lewis & Clark's route to my modern map of Missoula, I realized that they had entered the Bitterroot Valley from the south, so our path won't join theirs until we reach the town of Lolo, Montana-- about ten miles south of Missoula. That's where they camped at a place they called Traveler's Rest on September 9th and 10th, 1805, before heading up Lolo Creek on September 11th, towards a pass at the ridgeline that would take them deeper into the mountains, into what would be the most difficult part of the journey they had yet encountered. But when they returned over Lolo Pass on June 30th, 1806, the trail was known to them-- no longer uncharted territory. The mystery had been defined, the land forever transformed in their eyes.

It was at this point that they split into two groups to cover more ground on their return, Clark to explore the headwaters of the Yellowstone River to the south, and Lewis to explore the northern boundaries of the Louisiana Territory, coming down the Missouri River and meeting up with Clark's party where the Yellowstone joins it. Clark and the main party headed south, retracing the path they'd taken up the Bitterroot Valley the previous September, and Lewis took a smaller party north along the Bitterroot River, to find the shortcut over the Continental Divide to the Falls of the Missouri that they'd heard about from the natives. After heading up the west bank of the Bitterroot River (which he called the Clark), Lewis decided to attempt a crossing to the north bank of the Clark Fork (or East Fork Clark per Lewis) after the Bitterroot joined it. It didn't go well, but except for a mile detour to retreive a raft that had drifted that far-- and some wet equipment-- it also could have been much worse. This was just northwest of modern day Missoula, and on that night-- July 3rd, 1806-- they camped on Grant Creek near where it empties into the Clark Fork. By the night of July 4th, 1806, they were camped on the north side of the Blackfoot River about eight miles from its junction with the Clark Fork. Looking at the map, I realized that Lewis' party would have passed the location where the Doubletree Edgewater Hotel had been built, on the north bank of the Clark Fork right next to the pass where the river comes out of the snowcapped hills of the east, only a few miles downstream from its confluence with the Blackfoot. Lewis himself could have walked right across the spot where I'm sitting here writing this. This could have been where the group parted ways with their Nez Perce guides, before heading up the pass.



It seems odd to me that they would be marching on Independence Day, seeing how much they'd partied in years past. In 1803, news of the Louisianna Purchase had just reached the citizens-- the U.S. suddenly twice as big. In 1804 they'd fired off a cannon and allowed themselves extra rations of whiskey (in addition to the four ounces that was their daily ration) to celebrate the U.S.'s twenty eighth birthday, and the following year they used up the last of the rum (their backup liquor, apparently) on that occasion. So by July 4th, 1806 they would have been sober for exactly a year, come to think of it. No longer on the white man's medicine, the world may have appeared different. Perhaps it wasn't just that the land had changed in their eyes, but that they had been changed by the land, and the people they found living there. Their uniforms were all gone prior to their return over the mountains-- given away to natives or just worn out, replaced with buckskin clothing that they made for themselves, moccasins on their feet. Their priorities had changed. Or maybe their vision of who the Americans were, or what it meant to be free had changed. There's no mention I can find in the journal passages posted online about the United States on that day, but Sergeant Patrick Gass did write in his journal on the night of July 4th, 1806, referring to the Nez Perce guides who had just gotten them back across the Bitterroots,

"...it is but justice to say, that the whole nation to which they belong, are the most friendly, honest and ingenuous people that we have seen in the course of our voyage and travels. After taking our farewell of these good hearted, hospitable and obliging sons of the west, we proceeded on."



Thursday, March 16th, 2006, 18:06 MST
The Doubletree Edgewater Hotel, Room 122
Missoula, Montana
46° 52' 03" North Latitude
113° 59' 11" West Longitude
3,185' Elevation


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