Axel Deep At The Farm

05.02.2011

With a successful training with at Elements Wilderness Therapy we were all excited and our minds were moving at a million miles a second. There was talk about renting an apartment together, hitting a bar, going to Moab for climbing and a long list jittery pursuits. In the midst of this banter my phone rang. It was a CouchSurfing Host that wanted to know if I was still interested in staying with them. "Yes, thank you kindly. I would love to spend a few days on a farm."

The 31 from Huntington to Fairview crosses crests at 9500 feet and was in the middle of white out conditions. The road was iced and my rig slid around turns like a rally car.

Jim and Sherrie were extremely kind hosts and invited me into their large farm home. The place was immaculate, like something from Home & Garden magazine. With my prompting, they talked bit about LDS history. It's a sad thing that our country is still so young and much history is ignored or completely forgotten. Over the next few days I volunteered to muckout some birthing pens, feed the sheep, and split wood. Jim showed me how to use a sling like David and Golioth. It is really a formidable weapon in the right hands. He could send a walnut sized rock over two hundred yards. Sherrie cooked amazing food in generous portions. 

Sherrie and her daughter Beth took me to Diamondback hot springs about 30 minutes away. It was a two mile hike to the springs and well populated with college age kids looking to flirt on a Saturday. The water was hot and smelled strongly of sulfur. Natural rock and cement had been used to construct a chain of small pools from one water source. Each pool had a drain. I got curious and pulled the plug. The whole thing drained faster than a bath tub and we were left shivering on mossy rocks.

On Sunday my host left early in the morning to attend church and I was left to my own devices. 7 miles from the farm was a Birdseye Marble Quarry that was no longer being worked. "Sweet, lots of old rusty stuff to take pictures of," thought I.

The road to the quarry was a poorly graded mess half hidden in snow. The morning air was pure and crisp with the previous nights freeze. After several miles there came a hill deeply covered in snow and I knew my modest truck had met its match. Turning around proved to be difficult as the ground had become softened from a winter of constant frost and thaw. The Tacoma wheels began to spin and I tried to back up into more stable looking ground to gain traction. At this point both wheels sank into the mud. Clay more than mud that sucked the tires almost to the axel.


Someone recently poked fun at the confused pile that is the back of the Tacoma. Tarps, boxes, food, suitcase, sleeping bag, shoves, jackets, axe. Well it might be unsightly, but it sure comes in handy when your axle deep in mud and no one is going to come looking for you. The next hour and a half was spent chopping, digging, clawing, jacking, dragging, and cursing. Lots cursing.

I was never able to get much forward momentum. Both sides had been dug out and stones places under the tires, but it still wouldn't move. So the answer was to go backwards....as fast as possible. The Tacoma bounds and jumped over sage, backpacks and canned food flying all over the place. In the end we were liberated.






But I couldn't think of a better place to get stuck.