DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Installment 3, 5/23/08

Winston Churchill, who fought in his share of military battles, once observed that “there is nothing more exhilarating than to be fired upon without effect.” I have never been the object of gunfire, but I can surmise that the pleasure of hearing rain drum on a tin roof while one lays dry underneath it is similar. I have pitched my tent in an interpretive shelter in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, about an hour north of Yuma. A desert tempest pounds the roof above me.

This morning I woke up in a motel room in Kingman, Arizona. The night before, driving south from Colorado City and southern Utah, I had nearly run out of gas. I was driving along daydreaming, as is my custom, and not paying attention to my fuel gauge. We I saw the needle nearing “E,” I had to change my route away from the campsite I had planned to occupy and head directly for Kingman, the nearest municipality large enough to have gas pumps open after sundown. By the time I got there it was ten o’clock, and rather than drive out to some public land to set up camp at that hour, I took a room at the Hilltop Motel on historic Route 66. The establishment was only one story tall, so I could pull right up to my door. It had a kind and interesting proprietor who showed me my room, it been open since 1954, and it was right across the street from a pizza joint that was still open. All of these factors made the establishment appealing. It also had the virtue of being really cheap. I slept will, and with my eyes closed, it looked just like the Four Seasons.

Before I left this morning, I turned in my room key – not a card, mind you, a legitimate key – to the owner. He asked where I had been traveling, and when I mentioned Colorado City, he told me that Warren Jeffs happened to be presently incarcerated in the Kingman prison (Timothy McVeigh was also imprisoned there at one time). He was one of those rare people who can speak knowledgeably on a subject without becoming passionate, prejudicial or otherwise likely to take offense, so I asked more questions. He stood in his stocking feet with his stomach protruding against his v-neck shirt, straining the fabric at the waist and collar, and elaborated. Colorado City had been in a downward spiral recently, he said. A year or so ago the county authorities decertified the police force because the policemen were responsive to Jeffs, not to their protocol or to the law. Now, of course, Jeffs had been arrested. What law enforcement needed to do, in his opinion, was to go after the fundamentalists under RICO, because the community financed itself in large part by organized and possibly fraudulent enrollment in welfare programs. That Texas community that had recently been raided originated from the Colorado City crew. Warren Jeffs had sent “a few choice members” of his church in Colorado City to found the Texas community. The phone rang, and the proprietor of the Hilltop Motel answered. I thanked him for the room and the conversation.

I drove south toward Yuma, looking for a place where I could make camp and from which I could possibly stage a hiking trip tomorrow. I found a good spot – the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. It’s a huge expanse of land where I can hike and camp where I choose. But it was starting to drizzle, so I took my time looking for a campsite, hoping that the rain would cease before I pitched my tent. I drove into the Refuge on a well-maintained dirt road. A mile or so from the blacktop road I passed an interpretive center – really just an open-sided shelter about eight feet by ten. It presented the kind of introductory information provided in almost any public park. Signs under the shelter showed pictures of the local wildlife – this is what a mule deer looks like, here is a drawing of a gray fox, etc. I looked up at the roof. This is a place to come back to if things get bad, I thought. I got back in the car and drove on into the drizzle.

Things got bad. I had driven several miles and found a good place to camp, so I got out of the car to look for a tent site. But the rain was intensifying, and when I looked into the direction whence the wind came, I saw no break in the clouds. So I decided to turn back and head for my interpretive center. On the way back, conditions worsened. I was driving about ten or fifteen miles an hour and at some points had to put my wipers on high. These desert rains don’t come often, but when they arrive, they announce their presence with authority. The road I traveled had berms on either side from where the grading equipment had pushed the dirt it scraped away, and water began to pool on the desert floor on the other side those berms. Then in places the water broke through. In dips in the road, water flowed rapidly across the roadway like creeks. I drove carefully but quickly, wanting to get back to high ground before the road turned into a lake. At first I congratulated myself on having spent my adolescence sliding trucks around in the mud. But after awhile, things got so bad that it didn’t matter that I was familiar with the way rear-wheel-drive-only cars behave on slick surfaces. The whole road was a mess. I took some pictures, but I didn’t capture the worst of it because when I realized that the situation could actually become serious, I concentrated on getting back quickly. At one point, the entire roadway – from berm to berm – was covered with water. There was nothing to do but drive slowly and hope for the best. I held the wheel straight and pressed the pedal.

Tonight I had luck. I made it back. I set up my tent and camp stove in the interpretive shelter, and am now well-fed, warm, dry, and feeling sassy enough to reflect that, sometimes, life is like driving through a flooded roadbed - you just make your choice, then take your chances. Tonight I made a crappy choice about driving on into the desert, but the chances broke my way. I’ve never been stuck in the desert at night during a storm in a rental car, but I can surmise that my present situation is preferable.

As a wise man once said, I'd rather be lucky than good any day.