[to paraphrase the Doors]
There
was a frost overnight, although not a hard one, but enough to cover the puddles
with skim-ice and the rocks and boulders all around covered with a thin layer
of frost. I was at work by 08:40 and
within 45 minutes the skim-ice and frost on the rocks had melted away. I worked mainly on the right-hand turn around,
and it went well, partly because some of the rocks I humped back were good
sized and flat, maybe 3 to 4 inches in thickness, and several were as much as a
hundred pounds in weight, which meant more ground area was surfaced I good
time. By 13:10 I deemed that I might be more
or less finished, so I had a bite to eat, and studied my proposed moves. How good was my road building? I would soon find out.
At
13:50 I reversed straight back about 8 feet, which got me off the trackway part
of my construction … that is those narrow portions that went from each
respective front tire to their respective rear ones. After inspecting the road, I pulled forward 3
feet and slightly to the right, got out and studied the situation. I next reversed towards the right so that my
left front tire went up onto the left bank as I made the turn, ending up onto
the right hand bank, with my front tires on the main roadway … I was at the
extreme end of my roadway, and near the edge of the paved area of the turning
area on the right bank. I now saw that
my turnaround was probably not large enough.
Nevertheless I pulled forward onto the left-hand bank and reversed back
onto the right-hand turnaround, and was now 90º to the road, but still within 3
feet from the extreme left edge of the turnaround. If I were to pull forward across the road and
onto the left hand bank there was not enough paved area on that left bank to allow
me to reverse at the correct angle onto the right-hand turnaround that would
allow me to come forward off of it and away the way I had originally come seven
days ago. Even though the turning circle
of my SUV is tight and better than many small cars, I had been optimistic about
it. I had also torn up the paved banks
since they were so much softer beneath my paving than the roadway itself.
After
much deliberation, I realized that I would not be able to utilize the
right-hand area of the turnaround as planned (that area closest to where my
vehicle had been all these days), which would have allowed me to approach my
getaway at a shallow angle to the main roadway itself. I would have to do it from my present 90º
angle. But I would have to do some more
road-building first. The sun was well on
its western path, and rain was on its way.
I needed to do what I had to do, and to do it in a timely manner. I began to prize up the rocks I had laid on
the right-hand side of the turnaround, many of which I had laid that morning,
and move them behind my truck, onto the main roadway and also onto the left
hand bank. The bigger stones went behind
the SUV, since I had to reverse at least 4½ feet, otherwise when I made my
final move I would not be able to make the roadway, since I would have been too
far up onto the left-hand bank, when making that final turn. But the ground was saturated and muddy behind
the truck so I had to build big.
I
saw that the sun would be setting soon, and I didn’t want to spend the night on
the turnaround, as I worried that the weight of my vehicle, might cause even
these big stones to sink down into the mud, or worse still, that it might slide
into the mud if the weight caused it to slide in between the stones so that the
tires were in the mud itself. The moment
of truth … 16:25 … the sun would set in a few minutes … I had no time to extend
the paved area on the left-hand bank as much as I wanted to, but I hoped that once
I was in low 4-wheel drive, and with a run of about 6 or 8 feet that I would be
able to plow my front right tire through that soft left-hand (which by then
would now be on my right), and onto the main roadway itself. I gritted my teeth, reversed 4½ feet, went
immediately into forward gear, and plowed down off the turnaround onto the main
roadway (and immediately off my paved construction), the right-hand front tire
indeed plowing itself through the soft left (now right) bank, straightened back
out onto the main road-way, my rear tires now off my paved construction as
well, and fish-tailed the 600 yards to the tree-line, and onto the duff covered
part of the road under the trees! A
couple hundred yards further and I pulled off onto a wide spot, where I would
camp the night. That night I was sore and
stiff in spots, mainly due to that last couple of hours of construction, once I
realized I needed to do some extending. Rain
did come in overnight, but it ended by morning. I wanted to walk back in the morning and see
where the ruts on the banks were that my tires had incised while making my
escape. That was not to be … once out of
the mud, I didn’t feel like slogging through hundreds of yards of it again;
even if I may have learned something useful … I was tired of the mud. I spent the next morning cleaning equipment,
and finally changing into fresh clothing, and thought over my ordeal.
I
have always been of the mind that if I got myself into a situation, it was up
to me to get myself out of it, and this I was determined to do. Once I realized that it would not be a 3 hour
job, there was nothing for it but to keep at it until I succeeded or my food
and water began to run low; that would have been another couple of weeks. If I had to walk out of there it would have
been costly to have got a tow-truck in there to retrieve me. I carry tools, such as shovel, axe, bow-saw,
machete, and my trusty poker, am always well supplied with food and water, but I’m
no longer a young man, and it surprised me how I managed to carry all those
stones, out of shape as I really am for such endeavor. I didn’t get stiff or sore until the last
couple of hours, and didn’t feel that until the morning after, once I was
out. I can only think that the fact of
swimming 1250 meters once a week, had a hand in my success. Rough calculations are that I had moved
somewhere between 10 and 12 tons of rock, and walked about 15 miles,
constructing that roadway, half of that distance carrying weights; not really
that much or that far over 46 hours of actual labor, but considering that much
time was spent finding, choosing and prizing out the rocks, it was a good weeks
work. I also didn’t think about it until
I was safely out, but I had just done all that work at an altitude of 5500 feet
… I never felt breathless in an altitude sort of way, but more as one would in
the normal course of laboring … I guess slow and steady was the way to go.
But
let’s not beat around the bush; I was in a dangerous situation. People do get stranded out in the Oregon
Wild, and they do die out there. But the
ones I can bring to mind, were not prepared with tools and supplies, and hadn’t
thought about the what-ifs before
heading out. As I said at the beginning
of this blog/journal … I have entered the food chain, whenever I leave the
beaten track. What about the possibility
of a heart attack or a stroke out there by yourself, I’ve been asked? As the Sioux chief said to Dustin Hoffman,
back at the end of the 1971 film, Little
Big Man, “Today is a good day to die.”
I cannot fault that; I’d rather it happened out there in the Wild,
rather in a city parking lot! Almost any
day out in the Wild is a good day to die,
especially since I’m out there doing what I need to do … studying the beauties
of the Natural World through paint. Valuable lessons
were learned, not only about my own capabilities when in a tight spot, but also
more about the High Desert in Winter, and the decisions that should take greater consideration before they are followed. I should have turned
around before I followed the road out onto the flat, even if I might have bogged down at that point; extraction
would have been easier there than where I did get stuck.
I have extended these Posts about the road building
episode, over seven days; as long as the actual occurrence. I wanted my readers to get some sort of feel
as to the length of time that was actually involved, and to also get an idea
what I’m prepared to experience in my exploration of the Wild with my paintbrush. The next Post will resume with the next Oil
Sketch done after I escaped the mud. Oh
and by the way … for you historians out there, I escaped the mud on Pearl
Harbor Day … a day to remember in future, in more ways than one.
