Helpless as a Borrego in Mud

What happens when poor male judgment meets the Salton Sea. 

By Kurt Gensheimer

There should be a photograph paired to the word “helpless” in Webster’s Dictionary. It should be a photograph of a man, because only men possess both the lack of good judgment and oversupply of bravado to be caught in the situation I’m about to describe. The image should be of a spotless, chrome-rimmed, street-bound SUV stuck frame rails deep in mud. Below this photograph, it should read “see knucklehead”.

And the relative feeling of helplessness in said photograph is directly correlated to how derelict the area surrounding the stuck situation is. In my case, it was pretty derelict; it was in Salton City, right on the breathtaking shores of the Salton Sea. Breathtaking not so much due to the mix of sweeping desert and water vistas, but more due to the wafting stench of rotting fish carcasses and bird crap. And I’m not just talking your reasonable amount of carcasses and crap here. We’re talking serious, major league carcasses and crap – so much that the carcasses and crap actually were the two main ingredients besides wet dirt that made up the mud which devoured the 2009 Kia Borrego I was driving. No other word besides helpless could describe this particular situation. Helpless as a sheep, one might say. Or as they call them in Spain, borregos.

All I was trying to do was get a few cool photographs. Honestly. After getting stuck in another mud situation a few years prior with my brother’s Land Cruiser – which came with the added reward of an impromptu overnight car camping adventure with my father-in-law – you’d think I’d know better not to do such a dumb, I mean, male, thing again. I had even scouted the proposed photo shoot area, and on the surface, it was hard and crusty, thanks of course to the fish carcasses. But underneath, oh, underneath, lay the peril. Just like thin ice veils the many leagues of chilling water below, the thin fish carcasses veiled the endless underground sea of green bird poop that the Borrego was about to get stuck in.

And that feeling of helplessness begins to take hold of you when your vehicle goes from casually cruising along to slowly sinking downward like a ship with a hole in it. The process from here goes something like this: The wheels begin to spin. Man stops. Man shifts into Low Range thinking that it gives him more traction and power, and a confident “Don’t worry honey” is communicated to female passenger. Accelerator is applied. Truck sinks deeper. Man has slight look of consternation, and a less reassuring “I got it” is communicated to female. Accelerator is applied some more. Truck sinks even deeper. Now man knows he screwed the pooch, to use the parlance of our times, so he resorts to the most base male instinct; stomp the throttle through the floorboard. The anticipated result is predictable to any reasonable human being, except the knucklehead behind the steering wheel of course.

Thankfully, I wasn’t a rank amateur off-roader, despite my rank amateur situation, so the second the Borrego murked to a halt, I knew I was done for, and doing anything to get unstuck was only going to make the situation worse, so I just turned off the engine and got out. The helplessness sank in at just about the same rate the Borrego sank into the Salton Sea poop soup. But that feeling of helplessness was dramatically accelerated when a local on a Yamaha Rhino went zipping by holding a Coors Light while screaming, “You’re ƒ*©<ing nuts, buddy!” It was at that moment helplessness turned to panic.

No discredit or ill-willed journalism should be borne upon either the Salton Sea or the Borrego. Despite all the bad press the Salton Sea has gotten over the years as the world’s biggest man-made natural disaster, it’s an eerily calm and serene place. A place filled with curious secrets only revealed to those who wander its hundreds of miles of shoreline. A place where millions of birds and fish exist and thrive. A place where you really feel small as a human, especially if you’re dumb enough to get stuck in the mud.

And trust me, it wasn’t due to any offroad shortcomings of the Borrego. I could have been driving a Unimog and it wouldn’t have changed the situation. No bayou-blastin’ big-block 4×4 would have made it out of the carcass and crap concoction that only the Salton Sea can serve up.

I got confirmation on this fact when the Silver Bullet-wielding Rhino guy came by to assess the situation and said, “You’re ƒ*©<ed, buddy. I got my seventy-six Stepside with thirty-five inch mudders stuck in here once. Shee-ooot. Took four trucks to get me out. Two of ‘em got stuck with me and the other two took off looking for a tow truck with a winch. Five-hundred bucks later, I was out. Yep. I’d say you’re pretty well ƒ*©<ed.”

It was now four-o-clock, and the sun set in an hour. We had to be back in San Diego by six to my in-laws for dinner, which by this point was out of the question. I couldn’t bear the thought of telling my father-in-law that I got stuck in mud again. This time over a hundred miles from home, with his daughter, amidst a scary-looking guy who kept telling me my wife was “the pot” – whatever the hell that meant – while simultaneously jabbing me with his elbow and winking. At that moment, I feared the price for our rescue would involve cash and a special favor from my wife. I began to tremble.

Up to that point, the day was terrific. We started at home in Escondido, shot up to the mountain town of Julian for some of the best chicken on the planet at Bailey’s Bar-B-Que, then down to Borrego Springs to check out Galleta Meadows, a tract of private desert land owned by Dennis Avery. Galleta Meadows, which Avery has turned into a shrine of ‘free-standing art’ and a local attraction, features staggering steel sculptures of prehistoric creatures; almost like a post-apocalyptic version of Jurassic Park set in a barren desert landscape. The sculptures are the work of artist-slash-welder Ricardo Breceda of Perris, California, and their detail is painstaking. Hand-hammered sheet metal, rusted to patina perfection, accentuates every sinew, muscle and tendon of Breceda’s Gomphotherium creations.

Afterward, we wandered the sleepy street – because there’s really only one – of ‘downtown’ Borrego Springs, and then headed out to Salton City for a quick drive around the barren, abandoned town which held so much promise in the 1950’s as the next Southern California seaside resort. Although the idea was aborted in the mid-1960’s after it was discovered that the Salton Sea had some serious environmental challenges, the developers had already laid down the entire infrastructure. Roads, sewers and electric lines criss-cross the shores of the Salton Sea in a perfect gridlike formation. There are only two elements missing, houses and people. Even the street signs are there. Streets like Sea Dream Avenue, Treasure Drive and Rivera Circle give a glimpse of what Salton City could have been, but never became.

For my wife and me, it’s one of those eerie attractions we can’t stay away from. Abandoned seaside motor lodges, miles upon miles of empty roads complete with power poles that seemingly stretch into eternity, and of course, the sea, which showcases an abundance of wildlife and some of the most wondrous sunsets you’ll find on this planet. It’s a place you’ll never forget, especially if you’re dumb enough to venture off road.

 The sun was quickly setting, and we were no less stuck than an hour prior. After I had made a pact with Silver Bullet that I’d pay him 80 bucks if he’d get me out – a relative deal of the century considering we were technically ‘off-road’, and the local AAA guy, who, according to Silver Bullet was ‘a complete dick’, apparently charged $500 minimum for any rescue – we sat on the shore in wait for him to go retrieve his Stepside with lots and lots of chain. All I could think was that Silver Bullet was going to yank the rear bumper right off the Borrego, adding injury to insult.

Just then a trail-ready Mitsubishi Montero and Dodge Raider, complete with winches, cruised towards us from the seemingly abandoned mobile home marina about a half-mile away. Following directly on their heels were two smaller vehicles incapable of pulling us out, one of which was a motorized wheelchair scooter-type thingy piloted by an older gentleman in a Bermuda shirt with a straw hat. Although he was incapable of pulling us out, he was fully capable of sitting there simply to heckle me and relish in my moment of utter city-slicker stupidity.

I asked the driver of the Montero – a retired old Salton Sea salt who could have passed for Santa Claus if he headquartered his holiday operations in the Southern California desert – if Silver Bullet had sent him. He said no and pointed to the marina.

“We were up there playing some bocce ball, and we seen ya get stuck, so we figured you needed some help.”

 “You do this a lot, I take it,” was my response.

  “Oh yeah,” he replied as he hooked his winch cable to the back of the Borrego. “Every weekend.”

Salton Santa Claus slowly winched us to safety, with the Borrego suffering no more than a bruised ego and some carcassy crap splattered all over the shiny chrome wheels. I handed Santa a crisp Jackson and jumped into the Borrego to make tracks before Silver Bullet came back. But alas, as we were pulling out, Silver Bullet came roaring down the road in his Stepside.

 “Aw damn, they got you out already,” exclaimed Silver Bullet with a look of dismay. “I’d a yanked your ass right outta there, you know,” as he pointed to the pile of chain in the back.

 To diffuse any potential confrontation, I handed Silver Bullet a twenty for his troubles as well. He was appreciative and shook my hand.

 “Now you know, man. Now you know.”

  “Sure do,” I responded. “I’ll never do this again.” Silver Bullet roared.

 “Yeah right, buddy! You’re a guy. Don’t bet on it!” Silver Bullet dropped the Stepside into first and left me choking on a cloud of Salton Sea dust, which is far more agreeable than the mud.