Racing a Storm Through the Desert
Finals week left me mentally drained with Christmas rushing across the calendar in my direction. This year the plan was to have a quiet dinner at home with my mother and celebrate the holiday with the rest of the family towards the end of January when we will all be able to be together. But, plans don’t always work out the way we have them neatly jotted down in our datebook. Unforeseen circumstances prompted my family to pull together a last-minute holiday celebration in 48 hours since we would now all be in the same place at the same time. It was lovely, and for a moment, I felt like a child watching Rudolph by the cozy fire in my grandparents’ living room while Christmas Day faded into darkness.
The morning after Christmas I awoke to a grey morning complete with pouring rain and a chilling bite in the air, the perfect day for a road trip. After a brief farewell to my mother, I loaded up my dusty Jeep Cherokee and set off on the road towards Arizona. My goal for the morning was to make it through the pass just south of Victorville before the storm could render the roads unsafe for travel and indefinitely close the pass. Unfortunately, when I reached the southern end of the pass the I-15 had already been closed with no estimate for reopening. So I did what any girl in their right mind would do, I called my father and chose a new path that would hopefully keep me below the snowline and put me ahead of the storm while I traveled through the desert.
Thanks to the pouring rain and imminent blizzard that had rerouted my journey, the roads were a complete mess, and travel on the I-10 was stop and go for most of my time on that leg of the journey. Fortunately, when I turned off the busy freeway and begun the leg of the journey along a lonesome highway I had managed to cut through the center of the storm and come out on the other side, putting me in a position to potentially beat the worst of the weather to my dad’s house. For the next 40 miles of the trip, it was important to stay ahead of the storm because the particular road I was traveling happened to be crisscrossed with washes that would make travel treacherous at best in the event that they filled with water from the storm creeping over the mountains behind me.
About halfway through that risky stretch of highway, I happened to peek into my rear-view mirror and noticed that I could no longer see the mountain peaks through the clouds. The storm was about to break free of the mountain barrier that was buying me time on my dash across an apparent wasteland. I took a deep breath and pushed my car as fast as I was willing to go in the rain while I hoped that I would be able to maintain my lead on the storm at least until the intersection with the next highway.
I had driven this route many times in the past on my way out to Arizona, but the comforting landscape that I was accustomed to driving through with blue skies above seemed so sinister shrouded in gloom. I could not clearly see the mountains around me through the rain, and every time I glanced at the rear-view mirror, the grey beast chasing me had gobbled up more of the road. I had to keep reminding myself that at that stage in the journey the only real choice was to keep moving because any attempt to wait out the weather could leave someone stranded for days depending on flooding. No matter how panicked a small part of my mind was becoming, I knew that I just needed to continue forward and hope to reach the intersection before the storm could close the distance between us.
Just as it seemed like the storm would catch me, I reached the intersection and drove off towards relative safety on a road that did offer as many opportunities to get caught in a desert flash flood. I was finally in the last leg of my journey, and it once again looked like I might manage to keep my lead and be safely inside my dad’s house when the storm hit.
The storm attempted to overtake me just outside of Needles, but I turned onto a shortcut to the freeway while the hills once again slowed the progression on the icy beast. I raced down the freeway towards my exit and zipped into town in time to be off the road and lounging on the couch when the storm hit. The downpour was little more than white noise while we ate dinner and watched a movie before we all headed off to bed.
