A stratigraphic summary of our morning...

There, closest to the body of the truck... the light tan layer of the sandy country, where the heelers and I started our lek surveys, and what would have been the beginning of the sunshine part of the day.

If it hadn't been drizzling and lightly raining since about fifteen minutes before sunrise.

Needless to say, the grouse at the lek in the sandy country weren't strutting at all when we arrived. Just miserably wandering off into the sage.

Over 70 cocks strutting away on the second lek. I suppose the presence of more testosterone-induced competition will make any male ignore a cold drizzle. That, and maybe a few receptive females lingering in the sage. But here, and at the third, empty lek, we were traveling through brown mud, almost a loam, which tends not to stick.

Lek four had one cock left. Standing alone in the sage and rain, like Charlie Brown on the pitcher's mound, wondering why everyone else went home.

And then home we went, by the most direct, but probably least safe, route.

Across the Red Desert. The real red desert, not all the generic areas that receive that name. And hence the wide layer of red, iron-impregnated clay mud under my door step. A flat playa of clay where the top centimeter was mud, but below we stirred up dust. Where a single slip of the wheel could put us in the soft, saturated playa gumbo.

If ever that happens, the only way out is to wait for rescue.

Or the dryness of summer. Whichever comes first.

South of the red desert we were back into the grey desert. Poorer in iron, but much richer with clay. Hence the deep, thick layer on the bottom of the truck next to the red. Here the wheel wells got packed with adobe mud to within a centimeter of the tires. Here we gained a noticeable several hundred pounds of weight.

A few miles from the interstate we reached the hills. And gathered a ruffled layer of ordinary brown mud to cover the clay layers below.

Upon reaching the highway, the mud below the door made an audible crack when I popped it open.

And once back to civilization, it was another hour of working with a pressure hose and garden hose before most of the mud was off the truck, and the wheels free.

And another half-hour, and a load of laundry later, before the mud was off me.