Sand Scorpions in the Snow

 

My name is Bryan. 

And, I am a worrier. 

It’s been 237 milliseconds since my last troubled thought.

I am also a consummate optimist. No, not that kind of optimist. I am an optimist in the sense that I optimize everything I can. When I see something, I focus on how it could be optimized. This does not always mean "better". In other words, I can take a bad situation, and through my patented process of optimization, make it infinitely worse.

Like the time I went looking for turkeys and, instead, found sand scorpions.

Last winter, I went elk hunting in the Manastash wilderness (west of Ellensburg) with my friend Chris and had seen a ton of turkey sign above a place called Buck Meadows. And, right now, it’s Spring Turkey season. So, my plan was to hunt this same area with my other friend Chris. But first, I wanted to check out another area to the north of Ellensburg, just in case it had MORE promising turkey habitat.

So, two weeks ago, I drove out Coleman Creek Rd in the Kittitas hills (North of Ellensburg) to hunt some turkeys. I picked up my brother Chris and his two oldest boys (neither of which is named Chris) in Ellensburg. We got up on top of the ridge, about 4100 ft elevation, and it was dry as a bone. Hot even. 

Unfortunately, there was no sign of turkeys anywhere. I was glad to learn that my hunch for Manastash was on point. I chalked up that weekend as some quality time with my brother and my nephews, a scouting mission before the REAL hunt with my friend Chris the following weekend.

Having crossed Coleman Creek off the eligible hunting area list, I told Chris about my findings. We agreed Manastash was the place to go.

We were planning on tenting it, but then a friend offered to let me borrow one of his company’s camping trailers. I don’t sleep too well on the ground these days, so I gladly took him up on it. Worry free.

Manastash Creek Rd turns into NF-31 just past the last private property, the one with a gate that says “Go Away”—about 5 miles AFTER you lose cell service. We were headed to a place just above Buck Meadows, about 10 miles up NF-31. Two miles in, we saw the first and only campsite of some fellow turkey hunters. As we passed their camp by the side of the road, we exchanged nods of mutual understanding. Respect.

At 4.5 miles, the road crosses over the South Fork of Manastash Creek, and continues along the south side of the valley, which is the NORTH side of the corresponding ridge. At 6 miles, we started to see patches of snow. Some was on the road, but never very deep, and maybe for only 20-30 feet before returning to the bare road again. There were also pretty well-established ruts in the snow, meaning many people had been through this way before. So, we plodded along.

We were one mile from our destination, on the side of a steep canyon, and about to start heading back down to lower elevation. So, I assumed,

Surely this next patch of snow would thin out around the corner, just like every other one we’d passed through.

We rounded the corner and saw the road stretch out in front of us for another 400 yards, covered in snow. We could see where previous vehicles had struggled through some of the deeper patches. And since we were pulling a trailer, we couldn’t stop now and back up—there was nowhere to turn around. We had to keep moving forward. Keep our momentum.

At the end of the straight stretch, the road reaches the inside corner of a ravine and crosses a culvert for a little finger creek. But, just beyond the turn was that clear patch of road I knew would be there. Relief.

Only, we didn’t make it. We got about 30 yards from it and sank into snow that was too deep and too soft to let us pass. We were stuck. It was about 6pm.

We spent about 2 hours trying to dig ourselves out with ski poles and a crowbar. We stuffed branches, sticks, rocks, even a tow chain, under the tires hoping something would bite. Nothing. All four tires spun freely, carving comfy little wells in the snow.

I was thoroughly irritated. We were at 4100 feet, same elevation as last weekend above Coleman Creek, which was dry as a bone. But here, everything was covered in snow. I hadn’t brought a shovel, a chainsaw, long ropes/cables with a come-a-long. Nothing. Chris and I were digging in the snow, chastising ourselves for being so “amateur.” At about 8 pm, I stood up and said, “I’m out of breath.”

Chris immediately stopped and said, “don’t go dying on me now”. Well, I hadn’t even considered doing that — at least, not until he said it. Then that’s all I could consider. 

My dad died suddenly last year from a genetic heart defect. I had the same genetic defect. One minute he was standing there, shooting hoops. The next, gone. Just like that. We decided to call it quits on Operation Dig Out The Truck.

Chris was inflating his sleeping mat and then stood up and turned towards me. He looked at me with this blank look, like he was about to pass out. I asked if he was okay. He was—he was just thinking, I guess. But then I imagined him passing out anyway and falling over backwards, and sliding down the hill 80 feet or so into the creek and woods below. Time to optimize!

How would I get him out of there?

He has diabetes and has to be very careful about muscle cramps, etc. Then, I imagined my own heart stopping, just for fun, my body collapsing in the snow. Neat.

We tried to eat dinner, but I wasn’t hungry. At 9pm, we crawled into the non-level trailer and tried to go to sleep. We would have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. But the night dragged on forever.

Because I’m a storyteller, I started telling myself all sorts of stories. I told myself the story of the people that found our frozen bodies. I told myself the story of those people trying to figure out how to get ahold of our families. The story of my kids growing up without a dad. The story of my wife trying to hide the fact that I had gone into the mountains unprepared—to keep up appearances. The story of us making it out of the mountains only to have my truck, Brian’s camper, and all our gear trashed or stolen. The story of the disapproving looks on the faces of whatever hired rescue crews risked their own lives and equipment to pull my sorry self out of a place I shouldn’t have been. The story of thousands of dollars of fees for engaging those rescue crews. When I ran out of relevant stories, I told myself stories about social collapse, political chaos, apocalyptic futures — where my kids (who didn’t grow up but remained their 10 and 12) faced a future without their dad. These optimization exercises weren’t helping. I needed to stop worrying about today, which was almost over.

I had to worry about what I was going to do tomorrow.

I switched gears to stories about the long walk we would face. About muscle cramps and heart attacks lurking around every corner. Stories about trying to find a hospitable house where we could make a phone call. “Go Away”. Disrupting my brothers who live in Ellensburg from some important work they were doing on one of their house’s. I envisioned them dropping everything to come help, of course, but then getting themselves stuck and having multiple vehicles in need of rescue. I imagined spending hundreds of dollars on cables and come-a-longs only to die from the strain of porting them across 400 yards of snow. I told myself stories about returning to a stripped down vehicle—local yokels in their 4x4s coming up and breaking windows, taking the good stuff and blowing up the rest. What if the rescue vehicles cables weren’t long enough? What if they slipped and my truck, the trailer, and the tow truck all slid down into the ravine.

I was a mess. In addition to my heart rate, my jaw started locking and I couldn’t open or close my mouth. I didn’t sleep. I optimized. Then, it began to rain.

Oh, right. The weather forecast called for rain in Ellensburg on Saturday. God, make it a warm rain. Melt this snow.

In answer to my prayer, the rain grew heavier. Then it stopped.

Ah well, better than nothing, I suppose... unless—is it colder?

I opened the door of the heavily slanted trailer and noticed that the rain had indeed stopped; but the precipitation hadn’t. The rain was replaced by snowfall. That’s worse.

I guess weather can optimize too!

In 5th grade, I memorized the 23rd Psalm (King James Version) and have held it mostly intact in my mind. Here is the New English Translation (NET) version for the modern reader.

The lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He takes me to green pastures, he leads me to refreshing waters. He restores my strength. He leads me down the right paths for the sake of his reputation. Even when I must walk through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for You are with me; your rod and your staff reassure me. You prepare a feast before me, in the plain sight of my enemies. You refresh my head with oil; my cup is completely full. Surely your goodness and faithfulness will pursue me all my days, and I will live in the Lord’s house for the rest of my life.

I repeated this passage, over and over again. Every time my brain felt like it was on the verge of being submerged by my cascading anxiousness, I worked my way through the psalm.

My watch optimizes too. It has a heart rate monitor on it that warns me when I go over 100 beats-per-minute. Especially, when I’m not doing anything that would warrant such an elevated heart rate, like lying down. For those that don’t know, a body at rest should not register a heart rate of 100 bpm. But my heart rate was all over the place, peaking at 182bpm, as I lay perfectly still.

I gave my stories a headline:

Man Explodes Own Heart With Sheer Fret Power

In the morning, we got up. Carefully packing everything we’d need to survive a day and a night out in the wilderness, just in case. And began the 8-10 mile hike back towards civilization, aiming to stay ahead of the falling snow. It was 7am. The stories began again:

What if halfway there, one of us has a health event that prevents us from continuing? We’ll have to split up as one of us goes for help. What if that person then has their own health event? We’d both be isolated and at risk...

 

The snow changes back to rain.

“No one is coming up here today.”

As we walked out, mostly in silence, my stories continued to weave their way through my mind, dodging Psalm 23’s feeble attempts to soothe.

Who do we call? Kyle (my brother) doesn’t have any vehicle rescue gear. Maybe jumper cables. I suppose we call the Sheriff, or DOT, and see if they have a Mountain Rescue resource. How much do you think that’ll cost? Thousands, probably.

I wondered aloud to Chris, no bad ideas in a brainstorm: 

“What if there’s an off-road, 4x4 club in Ellensburg that we could ask to help. How would we even find them!?”

Everything seemed impossible.

We stopped every mile. Stretched a little bit. Drank some water. But all speculations about “how to get out of this situation” had withdrawn inside our heads. We had exhausted the out-loud version of the topic. We had to get out before we could think about getting help for the truck and trailer. If I wasn’t prepared for the initial disaster, then I was darn sure going to be prepared for every possible disaster that could follow. My brain took another stab at optimizing what could go wrong, storytelling to a rapt audience, myself, in solitary silence.

What if the turkey hunters weren’t at their camp. We’d have to walk another 3-4 miles. We’d have to find a friendly house with a phone. What if they were just seasonal cabins and not really occupied year-round? What if the snow doesn’t melt for another month? Would I have to come up here to defend my stuff until help could access the road? Am I going to have to live up here? For how long?

At mile 3, Chris said “Hey, we should pray about this. We haven’t done that yet.” 

I replied honestly,  "speak for yourself, I’ve been praying non-stop since last night. But, yes, go ahead.”

Ordinarily, that’s what I would have done. Especially with Chris, who is like a younger brother to me. I’ve always been the Hardy to his Laurel, the Garfield to his Odie, the Preacher to his Parishioner. Many has been the time I’ve offered up prayers for his life’s circumstances. But, this time, he stepped up. I don’t know if he could see me unraveling at the relentless stories I was attacking myself with, but he prayed a very earnest prayer.

Chris prayed for our health. He prayed for deliverance. Amen. Simple. It was very touching and I had a few tears in my eyes.

What’s up with these tears? This isn’t a life insurance commercial...

Tears of gratitude, future grief, anger, possibly some embarrassment, and probably some tears of relief, too. 

“I’ll be fine. It’s just stuff. 10 miles is nothing. If I lose the truck and the trailer, so be it. The rain has stopped at least.”

Then we talked about some Bible verses regarding Worry:

“Don’t worry about tomorrow, for today has enough troubles of its own.”

“Who of you, by worrying, can add an hour to his life?”

I was directly contradicting these encouraging words. Recognizing that my anxious optimizations were not only futile, they were warned against, I felt a little better. I tried to detach myself from the “stuff” I might lose and just be glad I was walking and breathing.

With about 1 mile to go before we reached the turkey hunters’ camp, we heard an unusual rumbling coming up the road. We thought it might be this big, heavy industrial grader we had seen lower down the valley. That thing could easily clear the road and pull my truck to safety. But, it wasn’t.

Instead, it was a jacked up 4x4 jeep. Two jeeps. Three, no, more! Five, six, seven... I didn’t count the rest because the first one had reached us. I hated the fact that my incompetence was going to ruin these peoples’ day. The driver rolled down his window. The train of 4x4’s behind him stopped, but remained champing at their automotive bits. I tried to dissuade him from going up the road and taking all my stuff.

“Sorry, man. I’m about to mess up your day. My truck and trailer are blocking the road about 5 miles up. We’re stuck in the snow and there’s no way anyone is getting out of here alive.” 

Or something like that. The driver's face changed from passive concern to genuine excitement.

“There’s snow up there!? Yes! We almost headed over to Coleman Creek today, but someone told me it was dry and boring. Well, hop in that white jeep behind me and we’ll go get you out!”

He didn’t even listen to see if we were interested in his help (which we were). He pulled up his CB and said, “We got us an adventure today! We’re going to go rescue these guys’ truck! Woohoo!” There were mutual cheers over the CB. Horns honked. Fists punched air through open windows.

We got in the white jeep and the train of off-roaders started moving again. For me, there was some little reluctance, because we were headed right back up the mountain road we’d just painstakingly hiked down. I was committed to optimizing the worst case scenario, even in the presence of our deliverers!

It’s all for naught if they can’t help.

They had a different view. First of all, they were having a blast. The got themselves stuck and unstuck several times driving around my truck. They hooked up two jeeps with winches. Deflated my tires by half. And pulled us out of the snow onto the dry ground within 30 minutes. They were laughing, playing, having fun. This was what they wanted to be doing. These were the “people” I had told myself would come up here to smash my windows and steal all my stuff. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“There you go! You should be good to get back. Remember: Momentum is your friend.”

But, I wasn’t done telling myself stories yet.

“How are we going to get out of here? What if we get stuck again?”

He wasn't going to play along. I didn't need someone to hold my hand like I thought. 

“This is the only way out, so if we see you again, we’ll help again. We’re Sand Scorpions! That’s what we do. ”

And then they drove off. That was it.

Chris and I got in my truck, took a deep breath, and motored back down the road. We didn’t have any trouble. We didn’t see those guys again. We kept up our momentum. We kept up their momentum!

I imagine part of them was hoping we’d get stuck again so they’d have something fun to do on their way off the mountain. We got down to Les Schwab in Ellensburg and filled the tires back up. It wasn’t even 10:30am.

Imagine if I hadn’t worried. I would have gotten a good night’s sleep. I would have woken up refreshed. Taken some time to eat some breakfast. Maybe do a little turkey calling just to see if there were any eligible birds in the area. Eventually, these guys in their jeeps would have arrived and helped us without us ever optimizing a thing.

“Who of you, by worrying, can add an hour to his life?” Not me. I had let my ability to optimize have it’s way with my ability to worry. I buried myself in an avalanche of horrific What-If scenarios. I assumed the worst. I optimized the worst. I took myself out, and it was all too easy. Thank God he had a pack of off-roaders who optimized for fun, instead of the safety of the dry and bare hills above Coleman Creek.

Safe at last, we decided there was still plenty of weekend left, so we drove over to Coleman Creek and found a relatively dry spot to camp.

Chris got out and looked for some turkey sign. But, the only turkey in the area had already climbed into the Mammoth camper and fallen fast asleep.

Sunday we woke up to sunshine. We found a few gobblers, that we chased across a mile-wide canyon. But, they got away. It was a blast.

When I got home, I logged on to SandScorpions.Org and bought a lifetime membership for five bucks. Then I started looking at Jeeps for sale, winch kits, locking differentials, and other rescue gear. Afterall, I'm going to need to optimize that thing.