A little fall of rain
Can hardly hurt me now
You’re here, that’s all I need to know
And you will keep me safe
And you will keep me close
And rain will make the roads muddy and slippery and get the car stuck, oh yeah, and make the flowers grow.

As the rainy season slowly descends upon us it is, so far, not what I expected. Every evening for the last week it has rained on Lewa but in swatches. A cloud forms, sweeps through and moistens a strip one or two kilometers wide missing the rest of the conservancy. The night before last we were blessed by our little fall of rain.
It was 5 o’clock and we were heading to the Lewa offices to pick up Kira — a visitor from the Sydney Zoo — for dinner at our place. It began to rain. I looked at Anne, “No problem, we’re in a four wheel drive vehicle and it hasn’t rained enough to cause the roads to soften up.” Off we went.

Driving down the hill to the creek crossing just below the house, the car felt really squirrely. The road had gotten extremely slippery extremely fast. After bouncing over the creek we started up the other side. The first 200 yards of the climb had rocks and gravel and we passed by with no trouble. Then we hit the mud. After another 100 yards, as the hill got steeper, the rear wheels began slipping. We ground to a halt with mud flying out the back as the wheels spun. I shifted into four wheel drive and started up again. No good. Backing up a few yards, I got a running start and managed to go another few yards then slid to a stop again.

We decided to turn around and try a longer but less steep route. Now here is where it gets, ummm, let’s say messy. Picture the road. It is a single lane worn into the ground so that there is a lip about a foot and a half high on both sides of the road. Back a few yards Anne spots a section on the right where the lip is low enough that I can back off the road and turn around. Well, as Robert Burns wrote, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray”.

After backing off the road, I put the car in low, cranked the steering wheel hard left and drove back onto the road. The front wheels failed to grip and I slid straight across and ended up with the front wheels pressed tight up against the lip on one side and the rear wheels half way down the lip on the other, perpendicular to the road.

Forward…reverse…forward…reverse, nothing. We were well and truly stuck. Climbing out of the car both Anne and my shoes were immediately caked with about three inches of mud on the soles; sticky, gooey, slippery and heavy. We ended up having to find sharp rocks to scrape the mud off before we climbed back into the car.

Looking at each other we were chagrinned, less that ½ mile from our house, after a short, gentle rain, we were going to have to call the Lewa operations center and get them to send a tractor to pull us out of our predicament. Imagining the smiles and laughter, we decided to give it one more try.

Anne climbed back out into the mud and I put it in low and tried to drive over the lip to the front. “John, why aren’t the front wheels spinning?” Anne asked. “I don’t know. I put it in four wheel drive.” I stuck my head out the window and sure enough the front wheels weren’t doing anything. At that point a glimmer of memory broke through. In some older four wheel drive systems, you had to lock the front hubs before the four wheel drive would work. I had never done that and my Land Cruiser didn’t have locking hubs. Joining Anne in the mud, I slopped my way to the front of the car. Sure enough there was a circular plate with an arrow which could be pointed to “lock” or “free”. It was pointed at “free”. Grabbing the tire iron from the back I twisted both wheel hubs to “lock”.

The rest is anticlimactic. Squishing back into the car, I put it in gear and drove up over the lip as I turned back onto the road. Anne climbed back in and we headed out to pick up Kira. When we explained why we were late she responded, “What rain?” Our little swath of rain hadn’t touched the office.