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Now you might be inclined to debate the aesthetics of the machine shown above but you probably wouldn't if you had been shut-in for a couple or three weeks, desperately needing to make a toilet paper run. Especially if your morning started off like ours did.
It was Thursday morning and simply time to make a supply run. We had heard reports that the roads were tricky but mostly passable. Mark loaded up the truck with empty gas cans and propane tanks and we hoped that everything needed was down on the list. He warmed up the new truck a little and disappeared down the road.
About 45 minutes later, he showed up again. No truck, just him with muddy feet. ??? It would appear that the first real road mire from here, about a mile away, had grabbed hold of the truck and refused to let go. Why dogs are better than mud is because you can usually convince a dog to let go of something without resorting to the big stick. But you can talk all you want to some mud and it isn't going to listen to reason until you get out the stick. With my smaller Dakota's transmission doing strange things lately, we didn't have that bigger stick on hand. What to do now? With the ongoing rains ripping up the roads, there had been less than two vehicles go by in the last week. So while we weren't going to be holding up a lot of traffic, potential truck rescuers were also going to be scarce. We called our gas field friend (he hasn't entered into the retrospect journal yet but, without him, this story probably wouldn't be possible). He would inspect his wells up this way and tug the truck out on the way by. As usual, I paced restlessly in the interim, working up a great palpitating case of anxiety. When the rendezvous call came in, we piled into my truck and headed back to the truck-eating bog.
We shoveled furiously in the few minutes before Virgil arrived since parts of the truck body were no longer visible. It became apparent that the truck had panned itself on the harder packed material like a turtle on a matchbox. The pull-out work went very well with the truck liberated on the second tug. The problem was that the truck could only be pulled out from the far side. Now he would have to cross back through it to come home again. While they disappeared up the road to a turn around, I shoveled madly again, this time trying to cut down the mud pack between the ruts where the truck had bottomed out initially. When I heard the trucks returning, I grabbed Brou and cleared out of the way. They passed through the muddy run throwing plumes of chocolaty gumbo high into the air. People sometimes pay good money to watch such displays but Brou and I were watching for free today. With his very good deed of the day accomplished, Virgil went to finish his well checks and we returned home to rethink the supply run strategy.
Within an hour, we could hear heavy equipment moving around in the canyon. The noise grew incrementally louder over the next hour before I saw a manned yellow box pop up from the low spot on the road. It slowly morphed into a big yellow cat, that road grader of our prayers answered. The sloughs and ruts that held us captive for so long were healed over as he rolled by. We couldn't help but smile and wave vigorously as he passed by on his return run. The possibility of life outside the canyon existed once more in his wake. Friday could now guarantee a town run for supplies and mail. The challenge and resolution often involved in these ordinarily mundane events have been a satisfying part of life for us here. Perhaps eradication of such simple daily challenges in our Western culture will not prove such a blessing in the long run.
Next entry: 2 or 3 days from now (if the creek don't rise again)
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