Home Cummins, Part 1

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Pre-Ramble: Current News
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The roads are still a mess out here, declared an emergency by some estimates. Mark dutifully made the supply run into town even though we were hardly in dire circumstance. The prospects of it deteriorating further made this small window a wise decision. He got out on the freeze but ran into the mud on the way back in. Still, it was great to get fresh supplies and pick up the mail in the process.

In one of the town newspapers, there was an article about volunteers making 4WD supply runs into the boonies, how some people were down to one quart of orange juice in the fridge and their animals already dying of starvation. Is it just me here or have people who have lived out here all their lives lost any common sense about how to be prepared for nature's expected twists in this harsh land? Has every one of us become so nannied that we need to rely on outside help to save us from our own responsibility to think and plan ahead? How prepared are you if your power goes out for almost 70 hours like Bruno's did recently? He had back up plans, do you? Can you keep warm, do you have enough stored food to survive a week while waiting to be bailed out? Please give it some thought.
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Above is one of the few vehicles that made it out here this week. Note the mud covering the headlights and windshield - they had obviously run through some good mud already. I took this photo merely seconds after both occupants stepped outside to relieve themselves well within view of the Rat. Why they couldn't have planned ahead and done so behind the berm of the new well site is an annoying mystery to me. Apparently planning ahead is a vanishing human trait.
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We awoke to another inch or two of snow this morning, a remarkably small accumulation since the storm had disabled our satellite connection last night.

I stepped outside and noticed that Mark's Ram looked great considering the road conditions. Then it occurred to me that this fine beast had endured unusually hard assignments from the get-go and that I was very grateful to have it here. That, in turn, has prompted me to journal the story of its arrival. It experienced a baptism of mud within hours of rolling off the dealer lot. That mid-September of 2006 was loaded with tales and trials, some still untold.

Retrospect: Mid-September 2006

After months of research, Mark found this most suitable truck up in Colorado. We piled into my Dakota and headed up there. Mark hung firmly to the agreed price despite the dealer trying to slip in profitable unannounced add-ons like the $127 piece of chromed plastic they called a bug shield. A quick $80+ profit times a couple of hundred trucks off the lot adds up but we weren't buying into it on principle alone. As they played the 'wait 'em out' game, thick thunder clouds formed and rain started to fall so we set off in a full blown thunderstorm. I will not forget that trip or that dealer for delaying our departure by three hours. Their cheesy profit ploy could have cost us our lives that day. Also, since they wanted to charge us high retail on a set of fully necessary BFG Mud Terrain tires with no credit on the factory installed tires, we still had one more stop to take care of that before heading back in. But without those tires, I probably wouldn't be here now to write this journal.

I followed Mark as we climbed back up the mountain on the steep roads, ever mindful of the sheer drops hidden by the blinding rains and that uncomfortable feeling of greasy pavement beneath the trucks. We raced on to the tire outlet, beating the storm back to New Mexico only temporarily. Now there was no time left to peruse the sale ads and pick up groceries but I was able to dash in and pick-up a few clearance items to salve my thwarted sale-lust while Mark picked up parcels.

The clouds caught up and let loose before we could even run back to the trucks. Mark called down to the nearest neighbor and was told that it was still all clear down there. We might have never attempted the trip back that day otherwise. By the time we began the 35 miles of dirt roads, the rain had already turned the clay into flowing gumbo and my old motorcycle sense threw me into high alert even though I was highly unlikely to hook up and fall down on four wheels. This acute sense of contact with the road and balance is not necessarily a plus in these conditions, at least as far as adrenaline output.

For the next two hours, we gingerly crawled up hills and hugged the inside of off-camber curves to allow for 'side slide' outwards. I didn't start getting antsy until we hit water running down the road at such a rate that Mark later noted that he was almost convinced that he had led us up a running wash in the blinding rains.

With my lower Dakota, the waters rushed beneath and against the body with a deafening roar and I could feel them draining away my connection with terra firma. It is here that our approach to driving departs radically. Mark was slowing down ahead while my urge was to stick a foot in it, fishtails or not, and just get it done. I pounded the dash with a free hand, yelling "Move it, MOVE it!!" like an old drill sergeant as the Dakota started to lose resolve and drift towards the ditches and sage.

Just when I thought I was going to play clam in the undertow, Mark reached the far side of the torrent and booted it. I was now lathered up and hot on his bumper all the way. I had a good twenty minutes to calm down before reaching our mailbox at the neighbor's place. She came out and, without thanks, grabbed the clearance bread I offered and announced that the washes were still not running. That was when I pointed out a very large tree limb that bobbed frantically as it passed by in their normally small wash which stands between us and our main wash crossing. Within another minute, we all witnessed a roiling tawny head of foam vanguarding the brown waters raging down the main wash. We heeded her insouciant command to head back a few miles, take the bridge there and use what we now call 'the goat path'. We hadn't had that pleasure yet. Meanwhile, I made a mental note of how, in her position, I would have treated what she clearly thought and often derisively voiced were a couple of clueless green horns in the neighborhood. I would have been concerned and asked them to stay. Then again, I did not have the poop-chute genes that we later heard have infamously run in that clan for generations. But you eventually learn and that is good.

So we left my Dakota there, unloaded the mail and my small bag of remaining sale groceries into the Ram and started back down the road. By now, the little daylight hinting through the storm was disappearing. While edging down a slick grade, three elk charged out in front of us to add to the already pounding blood rush of adrenalin. We had been rolling on tires now so thickly coated in clay that they no longer had treads to grip, not even ABS brakes would stop us now. The main wash had rushed ahead of us roaring bank to bank, 60 foot across. We had a good view of its fury from this ledge 30 feet above as we approached a sharp right angle in the cliff road. I felt an ice-watery pang when my stomach snapped up against my lungs as I sensed a complete and hopeless loss of traction. We both inhaled the seat covers with our buttocks as the Ram slid helplessly towards the cliff's edge. I vaguely remember saying "Oh, man, we're . . . ." as the truck's front wheels burst through the small grader berm at the edge of the cliff and the murderous waters below came into view front and center.
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To be continued
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