Lovin’ the Mud

There is definitely a love-hate relationship with rain. I love the rain because it makes temperatures down right bearable, makes the plants grow, and generally makes me happy. There is nothing like a good storm to cleanse the soul and make you feel like part of the earth. The hate part of the relationship comes with the lack of work that gets done after a good rain. Mud is the enemy here because few of the roads are paved and after a good rain many of the roads are impassable, at least in critical places. As I’ve written about previously, rain and mud lead to adventuresome field work http://underwater-superhero.blogspot.com/2007/04/muddin-south-african-style-when-you-are.html. Being a wetter year so far this year, it seems that we will lose our fair share of field work to rain and the muck it leaves behind. So its no surprise the first mud-vehicle interaction this year was a doozie. Last week we were out for a night survey on some of our plots farthest from camp. We do night surveys so that we can compare the distribution of herbivores on our experimental plots during the day and night – we see quiet a few elephants during the night and few during the day. Plus, we see all sorts of cool creatures like porcupines, civets, genets, and African wild cats.

Anyway, we were down on the Marheya string of plots and I decide try to make it through a section of the fire break that usually gives us problems after the rain. I don’t know why I tried to go through because I almost always avoid it even if it hasn’t rained for weeks. But I did, and predictably, we got stuck. Not just throw-it-in-4-wheel-drive-and-power-out stuck, I mean STUCK. So there we are at night, out of cell phone range, no where near a paved road, and horribly stuck in the mud – without a rifle to guard against the night time critters. My first thought after looking at the tires was “We are sleeping in the bush tonight.” But, determined not to sleep in the bush, three of us pushed while the fourth rocked the truck back and forth. We put down logs, stones, grass, anything to get some traction for the tires. For the first few minutes, it was more like a little bit of pushing and lots of looking around for that leopard that was going to appear out of nowhere. After 15 minutes of no progress in getting unstuck, it was all pushing and no looking. We lost sandals in the mud, got pummeled by thorns, and generally looked like tar babies…but after about 30 minutes the truck spun free (I fell face first into the mud) and we celebrated with a gin and tonic and by using all the drinking water we had to wash Kruger off our bodies. We spent the rest of the night driving around looking for lions, having fun, and staying on paved roads.