Bombing Range Road

15 miles of dirt "road" separate you from the world. Your back yard is a National Park, you cook outside, in the shadow of your trailer. Your kids miss more than twenty days of school a year because the bus isn't able to get to your driveway, as determined each morning by a man on a four wheeler who has the job of driving Bombing Range Road to decide whether it's safe or not to send the bus out.

Such are the conditions of the family of Keith Janis. Re-Member launched a project at his two trailers, amazingly connected with a breezeway/loft that form one of the most unique homes I have yet to see on the rez.

Getting to the house is nearly as unique. After passing through the town of Kyle, and heading back into the countryside, a signpost on the side of the road indicates that you have arrived at "Bombing Range Road" -- a reflection on the historic use of the area by the U.S. Military for target practice.

The trip begins, through cattle pastures -- and at times through herds of cattle themselves -- the road traverses the countryside. At best, it's a dirt road...but at several points the road is little more than a track, even in the best of weather.

In true Re-Member style, two vans were sent on the assignment, one with a trailer in tow. The drive already had a bit of a reputation, as the work crews were a few hours late arriving back at the ranch on Monday night due to a little bit of a sand trap...

Regardless, we returned on Tuesday...figuring that the lesson had been learned on how to navigate the perilous sands... assuming the skies stayed blue.

Naturally, it didn't go as planned.

As we prepared to pack up at the end of the day, with all intentions of getting underway early enough to get the hour-long drive back to Re-Member done in time to make sure that our volunteers would actually get to eat dinner on time, thunder began to rumble in the distance.

At this point, you can imagine that what I'm thinking in my head isn't going to be retyped here...

Following a few frantic minutes of literally throwing our materials into the trailer, and our volunteers into the vans, we were rolling towards what looked like certain doom.

Within minutes, the skies opened up. Our vans (did I mention they are rear-wheel drive) began to fishtail in the mud.

Winter driving this was not... it was worse than any snow-covered road I had ever encountered, and I was in the passenger seat at the time. I watched as the van in front of us came to a grinding hault in mud up to it's axles...as we began our slow slide to the right...

"Bryan..." I said in a slightly concerned voice, "I think we're going to slide off the road into that fence." And so we slid, as our volunteers expressed various emotions ranging from the "dude this is sweet" to "dear Jesus please help us."

When we came to a stop, we had destroyed no fewer than three fence posts, and at least 20 feet of three-string barbed wire... and the cows seemed to notice instantly. So, in the downpour, Bryan and I jumped out, into the shin-deep mud to evaluate the situation.

Stuck.

So for the next hour, we mend the fence.

Then I'm given the wheel of Van 1, with the request that I "try to get it back to civilization."

Off we go: through the fields (literally, as we were driving through the pastures in an attempt to find better traction)... In what turned out to be the most intense drive...ever.

The passengers were literally applauding when we would make it over a hill, across a cattle guard or through a giant mud puddle.

3 hours later, we completed our fifteen-mile trek. We were back to paved road.

The pictures don't begin to do the story justice...

Such is life on Bombing Range Road.