This is a continuation of a story Kris told on her blog. This will be a lot more entertaining if you first read http://neitherheadsnortails.blogspot.com/2009/11/looks-like-were-camping-here.html.
Before continuing on where she left off, however, I want to add a tiny little detail about setting up camp. I approach setting up camp in much the same way as I approach cooking bacon — it’s my job and everybody else better just stay the holy hell out of my way, in other words. With the bacon, it’s all got to end up the exactly perfect crispness, so there can be no overlapping of pieces and if this means I can only cook three or four pieces at a time, like it or go hungry, yeah? And if you even THINK about messing with my pan of bacon, you’ll receive SUCH a browbeating, you’ll never look at eyes the same way ever again. Apply that same mindset to pitching a tent, arranging bedding and fireside seating, meal prep, etc., and you’ve got me setting up camp.
After the bulk of the heavy lifting was done, I took an eye-wateringly cold beer out of the cooler, sat on the lid, and removed my mud-caked engineer boots. Heavy anyway, the mud added several tons. I twirled the cap off the bottle, tilted my head back for a well-deserved slug of cold cheap beer, and almost didn’t notice the ginormous white barn owl screaming in at eye level. Right at my face. Must’ve mistaken the pony tail for a rodent of some kind. I nearly choked on my beer, because it’s pretty difficult to safely swallow icy beer while keening like a little girl at the same time. At almost the exact same instant, the owl realized I was maybe just a smidge larger than his usual diet, and he also screamed like a kitten with its tail caught in a kitten-tail-crusher. I think if I were an owl-whisperer, this is what must’ve passed through his mind as he wheeled away: SHIT!! MONKEY!!! I picked myself up off the dirt an instant before the beer bottle would’ve implanted itself in my forehead. Kris, of course, was laughing her ass off in a very concerned and helpful manner.
The day after the events Kris described in her blog, we decided we’d better get to work getting the car out. The term our questionable map used to describe the mud in those parts, bottomless, is about the best word possible. The first over-the-toply optimistic idea I had was, hey, the mud’s been sorta gelling over night, I’m sure it’s solid enough I can just gun the car out with brute force! Duh. No amount of spinning those tires, in either direction, would budge Hector an inch. Oh, yes, Hector. The Toyota’s name was Hector, and he (I know, you’re supposed to think of your car as female, but this son of a bitch was FAR too stubborn to be anything but male and an ass) was giggling uproariously at my attempts. Down to business.
First, the digging. If we dig all the mud out, there must be drier dirt somewhere beneath it. Bottomless. For real. In the time it took to lift a shovelful of muck out of the hole created by the shovel, it filled back in. It was like some weird special effect in a movie about Sisyphean tasks. Clearly, we could dig all day and it would have absolutely no effect on the level of muck upon which Hector placidly sat.
Gravel. Kris and I both had, on many past occasions, used gravel to get cars unstuck from snowbanks and ice wallows. You’d think gravel’d be easy to come by in a desert, and maybe you’d be right elsewhere, but the west desert offers nothing of any assistance ever. Except solitude. Which wasn’t helping us at all that day. Where in the world could we find gravel out in this great empty expanse of sage brush and giggling rabbits? Okay, so maybe it sounds paranoid, but I’m pretty sure the rabbits were laughing. Believe it or don’t, I don’t much care either way. So, after casting about for some time, gathering a lot of rocks that were pretty much too big for our purposes, Kris remembered the reason the tent was so pissy — more importantly, she remembered about clinkers.
Do we really find actual clinkers next to railroad tracks in this modern age? Bonus points for anyone who answers this one correctly (except Cristine, whose background makes her overqualified to answer). No. Clinkers were accidental leavings back in the days of coal-powered locomotives. However, there is a lot of gravel associated with train tracks, so we dragged a tarp over, loaded it with about a million one-inch bits of rock, and dragged it back over to Hector.
At first, as we started pouring gravel behind the back tires, it was rather like dumping rocks into a flooded quarry. They vanished faster than we could pour them. Bottomless. Finally, they began to pile up above the level of the mud, and I decided to give it a try. Let’s just say I’ve never seen a more spectacular spray of gravel in the state of Utah. Once, in California, with Hector, we managed to throw large quantities of slate slabs that flew like Frisbees or skeet, but that’s a blog for another day. Gravel shotgun effect aside, we had accomplished nothing.
Let’s prop a chunk of wood behind the tire! Nope.
Let’s pile up cheat grass in such huge quantities that they dry up the mud! Nada.
Let’s say, “Fuck!” a whole bunch of times, with volume and enthusiasm! Didn’t move the car an inch, but made the steadfast refusal of the car to move a little more bearable.
Finally, and it was Kris’s idea, Let’s revisit the gravel idea, but once the gravel’s piled high enough, let’s put a tarp over it and under the tire. Hey, why not? Once we had this all set up, Kris gave me a final bit of advice — “If you should actually get moving, remember to shoot for the BIG grass this time, huh?” As the only place there was room enough to work was behind the driver side rear tire, my plan was to go backwards and, once traction was established even the tiniest little bit, to romp on it and so up to the big grass.
This worked, and if you’ve ever been stuck for any appreciable length of time, you know the elation I felt as Hector finally rocketed out of the muck and up onto the meadow where, if it ain’t true it oughta be, I ran over those giggly smartass goddamn rabbits. I stopped the car, leapt out, and did a little victory dance. Even had a celebratory smoke, because I’d obviously earned it. Kris and I took that moment to just sort of bask in the glow of our glorious escape.
Finally, we decided it was time to strike camp and move on to the next site. I started to pack up the tent and gear (striking camp is also like cooking bacon — BACK OFF, I’m DOING IT!!) when Kris, who had gone out to Hector’s near-grave to gather up our tarp, said, “Dude, uh, where’s the tarp?”
Damn good question. I went out into the muck sea to help her dig around for it, but after a good five minutes, we were convinced it must’ve hung up on the car somehow. I walked over to where Hector sat, looking appropriately humbled, and cast around underneath until I finally located the tarp.
I should clarify that we’re not talking about some wimpy little blue nylon Wal-mart special tarp, especially because this story takes place before there even were any Wal-marts in these’yere parts. No, this was military surplus half-inch-thick by-god canvas. And it was wrapped around Hector’s axle like a — like a — uh, tightly-wrapped-around-an-axle thingy. Damned simile failures!
Eventually, we had to jack the car up so that I could carefully disentangle the tarp, which was so completely infused with mud, it was nearly as muddy as my jeans. Oh, I forgot to mention — in all the morning’s work, my jeans had become mudslicked to the point that they were indistinguishable from the bottomless roadbed.
So, having freed the tarp and, eventually, packed all the gear back into Hector’s loving embrace, Kris and I had a brief discussion about what to do about the mud-drenched tarp and jeans. I hadn’t packed any other pants or shorts, but we decided no one could see me from the waist down while I was driving anyway. So we lashed the jeans and the tarp to Hector’s luggage rack such that they were able to flap free in the breeze while we drove to the next site.
Upon our arrival, we removed the tarp and my jeans, both of which had dried completely stiff. It’s the only time I’ve ever said, “Those jeans are so filthy, they could stand up by themselves!” and it actually meant something. The tarp? Well, you remember the Superman comics when we were kids, right? The dramatic way his cape was always drawn, flapping the in the wind of his passage? (Which reminds me of. . . uh, never mind.) Yeah, that was the tarp. Very dramatic. Both items, when pressure was applied, literally cracked and snapped as the caked mud broke away. After beating them on a rock for a bit, they actually came pretty clean.
These events all happened in the first few days of that trip, which ended up being epic. Nearly three weeks on the road, driving almost completely aimlessly all over Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. Waking up each morning, striking camp, breaking out the map and deciding what was close enough to drive to that day. In short, a young people’s trip. When finally we arrived home at the end of the trip, my sister remarked that we looked like Pig Pen from Peanuts as we walked to my apartment, dust and grime literally hanging in the air around us. Good, good times. Damn good times, to quote John and John.
