I was lost, lost, lost
Oh where was that road?

I was trying to find Cindylou and Michael’s cabin in the Sierras,
not far from Auburn, California.
I don’t know, looking back, why I even thought I could find it, but I was confident
and that was a problem.

I had rented a car and visited my dear Aunt Betty in Roseville
and even though it was rainy, I thought it would be fun
to drive up into the foothills and spend some time at the cabin at Stony Falls.

I’d been there before, and was sure I could find it.
But I couldn’t find the road I needed to turn off on.

Finally I saw a small road turning off to the right, and I decided to follow it.
It seemed quite narrow, which I didn’t remember
and then after about a half mile I saw that it was really a service road
running alongside an irrigation ditch,
which was full of water, roaring down from the mountains
to the thirsty fields and farms in the Sacramento Valley.

The canal was about 8 feet wide, and I don’t know how deep,
but full of grey muddy water roaring along at full speed.

I was definitely not on the right road.  I was lost.

The dirt road was muddy, the rain was pouring,
and the windshield wipers were swishing back and forth as fast as they could go.
No cell phone.  No one knew where I was.
I looked for a place to turn around, but there were no turn-offs on the narrow road,
and the farther I went, the narrower the road seemed to become.

It was hard to keep from watching the water
rushing, rushing, rushing along beside me in that flimsy little rental car
a sedan of some kind
the speed of the water was mesmerizing, like a fountain, but haunting.

I needed to turn around.
I pulled over as far as I could to the right, and started to back up
and that’s when the tires got stuck in the mud.

I knew I shouldn’t panic.
Panic is bad.
So I prayed.

I knew I had to get out of the car and check the tires.
Of course, on that day, in that era of my life,
I was wearing the standard footwear of all massage therapists:
Birkenstocks (leather sandals) with socks.  Classy.

I stepped out of the car and my feet sunk into the clay.
Oh great, I thought.
Knowing that now the inside of the car was going to be muddy, too
which only mattered if anyone ever saw it again.

I walked around to assess the situation.
The back tires were definitely stuck, though not too deep,
but it was raining hard and I was a long way from nowhere.

Then I remembered another time
when I was all alone and my car had gotten stuck in the mud.
It was on a New Year’s Day, years earlier,
when I’d gone to go pick up my sister at some place I’d never been before.
I was still near home that day, though, so at least that was familiar,
but I’d gotten lost then, too, and ended up in some big field at the north end, at dusk,
looking out over Puget Sound from the top of a hill.

It was cold that evening, but not pouring, and there had been lots of room to turn around
but no traction.
I remember that there were a bunch of newspapers in the car for some reason,
and that I’d placed some of these under and behind the tires
so that, by moving the car back and forth, rocking it more than backing up,
I was able to get on solid ground again and turn around.

No such luck here.  I was fresh out of newspaper.
I looked around
There were some kind of weeds growing up along the road.
Sedges or dock or something, not grass.
Whatever it was, it was tall and stick-like and profuse.

I pulled armfuls of these out and shoved them under and around the back tires
and tried the same trick.

It didn’t seem to work at first.  But I kept at it.
Little by little I was able to turn the car around.
I kept having to get in and out, pull more weeds,
put them under and around the tires, and get back in again
smearing the floor of the driver’s side with copious amounts of mud in the process.

It was pouring, and I was soaked.
Meanwhile, the water in the irrigation ditch continued to rise.

The scariest part was when I had turned the car around 90 degrees
so that it was facing directly toward the ditch.

Easy does it, I told myself.
Slow deep breaths. Don’t jam on the gasoline.
It would have been easy to slip, because I needed less pressure on the gas pedal
now that I had maneuvered the car around
and my feet were slick and slippery on the pedals.

Finally I got turned around and made my way back to the paved highway.
Thank-you, I breathed in prayer, as I pulled out onto the asphalt.

Shaking, not laughing, I headed back to Sacramento.

I had the car professionally detailed the next day before I took it back to the airport.
When I drove up to drop it off,
the manager cocked his head in surprise as he looked over the car.
It was much too clean, and he knew it.
I handed him the keys and he took them, without saying a word,
but I could tell he’d wanted to ask me what I’d done with the body.