Rising waters

“Brakes! Brakes!” my mom screamed from her co-pilot’s chair.

Dad awoke from his daze, jumped on the “binders” and slowed our 1980 Subaru from its top speed of 58-mph to a screeching halt. Also roused, I turned my 10-year-old eyes to the view through the smudged window. The double yellow line had simply vanished.

There, with absolutely no warning, a giant tongue of muddy water had emerged from the sage and scrub of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. Thousands of gallons of sand, slurry and suds had made their way down an arroyo and buried 100 feet of our yellow brick road to the beach in Mexico. The question on everyone’s minds was whether or not our proud blue Subaru could survive such a crossing.

Dad jumped out of the driver’s side and began a highly suspect investigation. Grabbing a handful of pebbles, he pitched them one-by-one into the middle of the stream. When his tosses failed to yield an accurate depth, the desperate man grabbed a spindly yucca stem and dipped it along the edges of the new river. Once again, the results offered no hope.

Just when things look bleakest, our answer rumbled up in the form of a dusty brown Buick LeSabre, complete with a white naugahyde roof. Two Latina women climbed out of the LeSabre’s faux wood interior and stepped toward the flood atop stiletto heels. They took one look, nodded at each other and then climbed back behind the wheel, firing the Buick’s whopping 135 horsepower V-8 back to life. Without a second thought, they charged toward the roiling brown river and plunged into the thick stew.

The car virtually disappeared before our shocked eyes. Soon its naugahyde roof offered the only evidence of the Buick, sticking up out of the wash like an albino shark’s fin. Copious quantities of all-American exhaust bubbled to the surface from their invisible tailpipe. We were certain they’d be washed downstream, next stop the Gulf of California.

But seconds later, the little ladies and the LeSabre were magically resurrected. Somehow they reached the other side unscathed. Dozens of muddy gallons poured from the proud American beast as the boat’s captain jumped on the gas and thundered on down the highway.

Dad was not convinced and tried several more times with the pebbles and set out looking for a longer stick. In the meantime, fellow travelers started to materialize out of the desert haze. Vans, RVs, long-haul truckers, a VW van and even a Trailways tour bus stacked up on both sides of the flood. Drivers, passengers, kids and geezers all baked beneath the Sonoran sun and contemplated the clash between wilderness and the white line.

Finally, my pop had enough (thanks largely to direct orders from a now irritable co-pilot and the third turn of the Eagles’ “Greatest Hits” 8-track). He saddled up the Subaru, fired it to life and nosed it into bubbling waters. The

After a few tense moments, we managed to follow in the footsteps of the LeSabre and emerge on the dry side, soggy but safe. Unlike the LeSabre, we were greeted by dozens of people cheering our success. Weary hands clapped, grandmothers took breathers from lipstick-stained ciggies to offer the thumbs up, and normally hostile truckers flashed my pop the universal A-OK sign. The Eagles shifted into “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” and we rolled down the road toward Mexico.

But dad wasn’t having it. “I think we learned a valuable lesson today,” he lectured the family in grave tones. “Those mujeres in the LeSabre were the ones with the real cojones.”

And so I took that lesson – along with newly found obsession with flash floods – on down the road and into the present day. I’ve also been tripping into canyon country for another glimpse of the brown swirl since about the time that old Subaru went in for scrap. Never is the desert more alive than when its redrock washes and arroyos are plugged with a roiling mass of mud, limbs and loose rocks.

I heeded that calling just a few weeks ago when the fateful words echoed across the radio airwaves. “A flash flood warning has been issued for sections of Western Colorado and Southeast Utah. People living along streams and creeks are encouraged to move to higher ground.”

I could practically taste that dirty water and promptly loaded up the pickup and pointed it for lower ground. After two hours of window time blissfully free of the Eagles and their greatest hits, I pulled into Comb Wash. As promised, a wide muddy tongue was covering the two-track. Feeling as bold as a bank teller in stiletto heels, I dropped the Toyota into 4-wheel-drive and started for the swirl.

But my inner co-pilot wasn’t having it. The flash was wide, visibly deep and moving quickly. “It’s too big, too wide and way too fast,” I could hear my mom calling from the land of road trips past. Testing the waters with pebbles and a long piece of driftwood didn’t offer any assurances. The mighty LeSabre was nowhere in sight.

And then the desert offered up the answer – a massive cottonwood trunk trailed by a half-full, 2.5-liter bottle of Big K soda bobbed down the wash and toward the San Juan River. The tree was at least as long as my truck, and I briefly envisioned a hammered RV pinned dozens of miles upstream, its open refrigerator missing that bottle of orange fizz.

A familiar voice, along with the Eagles’ “Take It Easy,” called from somewhere deep in my subconscious. I dropped the car out of four-wheel, followed the flood advisory and returned to higher ground. Thanks for the reminder, dad. You called it on that day way back when. Some crossings are best left to the mujeres with real cojones.

– Will Sands