I spent a lot of my career driving Jeeps, Toyotas, and Forerunners on rough roads. Normally everything goes fine. Sometimes, through absolutely no fault of my own, I get myself into trouble on these roads.
A resident biologist warned me not to drive the two-track roads of the area he managed after a rainstorm, but what did he know? Wildlife biologists who get promoted to permanent positions spend their time indoors staring at screens rather than conducting field work. Their skin grows used to blue light from computers rather than sunshine. They unironically use phrases like “Let’s circle back to that,” or “We need to do a deep-dive on the time-frame of that deliverable.” It had been a long time since he had done any kind of field work and he had probably forgotten how to drive cross country.
But to humor him, I walked the first hundred meters of the road to see if they were passable. The mud squelched a little bit beneath my boots, but if I put my jeep, fondly named Behemoth, in 4-wheel drive and drove slowly it should be fine. Sure enough, Behemoth rumbled along with ease.
Clearly the biologist had no clue what he was talking about. Or maybe he wasn’t as skilled an off-road driver as me. Absolutely reeking of smugness, I gave a little more gas to get over an upcoming hill. Then, to my complete surprise, Behemoth stopped. I pressed the accelerator and the tires spun madly without moving forward.
As a child, cartoons led me to believe that quicksand was a very real danger in daily life. This concern of mine had waned somewhat with adulthood. Now I realized what all the fuss was about. A slight depression in the landscape had turned into mud soup and was rapidly trying to swallow both Behemoth and me.
Rationally, I knew that panic was only going to make it worse.
Needless to say, I panicked and threw my full body weight onto the accelerator. The tires spun, digging Behemoth deeper into the mud and slung rooster tails of mud over its top while the engine whined in protest.
I firmly pushed down the panic that was rising in my chest. I really did not want to have to call someone to rescue me. I had already talked to one person the day before and that was my limit for human interaction for the week. I did not want to have to call the resident biologist and tell him that I needed his help because I had done the one thing he had told me not to do. The threat of potential humiliation was a powerful motivator to extract a rapidly sinking Behemoth from the primordial soup myself.
Slowly driving the car back and forth did little except to deepen the mud pit. I got down on hands and knees and tried to dig out a space in front of the tires but it filled with mud as quickly as I cleared it. I dug faster. The mud filled back in even faster. I tried pushing the jeep from behind, hoping I might be filled with the superhuman strength that lets mothers lift cars off their children during emergencies. Apparently this superhuman strength is not available to scrawny ornithologists too stubborn to ask for help when in emergencies of their own creation. Instead, I slipped and fell into the churning mud bath.
I tried driving the car back and forth again, aiming for grass on the side of the track instead of straight ahead in the hope the deep-rooted prairie grasses would have strong enough roots to keep the soil from turning into mud. Behemoth almost made it, but the ruts of the track were too deep and the tires couldn’t find enough traction to crawl out of them.
I just needed something for more traction. I scoured the ground nearby for a rock or some branches to give Behemoth something to sink its claws into. Unfortunately, prairie landscapes have very few trees. It’s somewhat of a defining characteristic. There were plenty of prickly pear and cholla cactuses, but I was wise enough not to put something with spikes underneath tires that could puncture—I would never hear the end of it. I got back into the jeep, now sunk nearly up to its axles, and my eye fell on the floor mats that were now coated in thick clumps of mud.
Struck with sudden inspiration, I pulled all the floor mats out of Behemoth and wriggled underneath the jeep to place them as close to the tires as I could. By the smell of it, this was no mere mixture of rainwater and dirt. This was the vile and ancient brine in which the earliest life forms had come to consciousness. I crawled out of it like a permian fish emerging on land for the first time and slithered into the driver’s seat with a small spark of optimism flaring in my heart.
This time, Behemoth pulled out of the mud pit and onto the more stable ground next to it. Mud coated the windshield despite the best efforts of the windshield wipers, but I didn’t dare stop, so rolled down the window and stuck my head out of it to see where I was going. I whooped in excitement and kept driving until I made it back to the main road.
Mud caked Behemoth except for a small opening in the front windshield where the windshield wipers had labored to clear a patch. Much like Behemoth, I was also caked in mud from head to toe and had somehow managed to coat every surface from the floor to the ceiling on the inside of Behemoth with mud as well. But I was no longer stuck and would not have to call the resident biologist to rescue me after all, and that was the most important thing.