A "Little Death" in Utah

Good and stuck.

If you want to know, 37.855970514779116, -111.22344296977234 is where it happened. Where we got stuck, that is. Just short of Horse Canyon, which is about eight miles this side of Little Death Hollow. In France, they call orgasm la petit mort, but I’d wager that no horny Frenchman was involved in naming Little Death Hollow. In this kind of country, you’re more likely to be going than coming, if you follow my meaning.

This was my sixth annual trip with Scarlett Jovannson. She came into my life in early 2017, and we’d spent every summer together since then. Pretty happy, most days. But we’d been through some tough times together, too: an engine melt-down in Wyoming after a botched oil change in Idaho, a near-fatal collision just outside of Plush, CA, ill-considered decisions to go “just a little further” on narrow logging tracks that just kept getting narrower, and worst of all, getting good and stuck in snow, mud, and sand.

There seemed to be an inevitability about it. It happens once a year. So this was number six. Of the previous five, I’d been able to get myself out twice. The other three left me stranded and humbled until someone came along to save us.

Scarlett is a two-wheel drive Sprinter van, but she’s got 4” lift and 16” tires that make her look tougher than she is, which gets her into trouble sometimes. This was definitely one of those times.

We’d taken this road before, twice, actually. Last year, and the year before it was a pretty smooth drive from the Burr Trail back to Horse Canyon, where we camped for a few days under cottonwood trees. We thought we knew what we were doing, because we’d done it before. But a single rainstorm can transform any section of desert from what you remember to something you’ve never seen before. The riverbed the road ran parallel to last year now snaked back and forth across our path, leaving us with soft sand banks to charge up and slide down.

I should’ve known better.

We came down one of these two or three foot banks and I heard and felt the tow-hitch catch on rock. There was a boulder barely hidden in the soft sand, and now the ass end of the van was suspended on it.

For three hours, I hammered and chipped at the boulder, trying to free the hitch. We dug out the tires and slid useless skid bars under them. We deflated the tires, hoping that would increase their traction. We unloaded and removed the cargo box attached to the hitch. We emptied the water tank to lighten the load. (Stuck in the desert, miles from the nearest paved road? Dump your water tank!)

In the end, divided America saved us. First, a family of four in a Toyota with California plates came along. Friendly Dad and unfriendly Mom, two surly teenagers looking at iPads in the back seat. Mom muttered darkly about us being back here without four-wheel drive (a fair point, but there was a “kick a guy when he’s down” quality to her griping). Meanwhile, Dad and I unhitched their trailer, hooked up the tow-strap to the front of the van, and he gave her a serious tug with the Toyota. Scarlett resisted, but on the second tug, she came down off the boulder and rolled into the riverbed. Free at last!

As the unhappy Democrats were continuing toward what promised to be a miserable afternoon hike, a good old boy in an un-ironic cowboy hat came the other way in a spotless white pick-up truck with Utah plates. I told him we were all set, as I just needed to pull out our air compressor to re-inflate the tires that were too flat to drive on. He said, “I can do that faster,” and pulled a CO2 contraption out of the back of his truck, proceeding to inflate my tires in a fraction of the time it would’ve taken me with the compressor. His wife never got out of the truck, but she looked at me with the utter disdain country folk seem to feel for city folk. She probably thought I had a bottle of baby blood in the Yeti cooler, and I’m pretty sure there’s a “Let’s Go Brandon” sign in their front yard. Still, I sure appreciated the help.

I don’t know what’s about to happen to this country, but I hope we don’t lose the appetite to go a little further than we should, to risk getting stuck, and to stop and offer a hand when we see someone who needs a tug, whether they’re driving a red hippie van with a bison femur or a white pickup with a gun rack.

Oh, and vote while you still can.

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My uncle Dan turned me on to this Louis CK-looking guy, who specializes in rescuing dorks like me in Utah. Some amazing videos on his channel plus, he and his buddies are pretty funny.