Swamping, again

Trips into the swamp have been few and far between, this spring. The weather has been highly uncooperative, to say the least. Well, today we had sun, and an afternoon low tide. That’s always a good combination. I headed out early, to be sure to catch whatever low tide I got, given that the strong winds are making the tides highly unpredictable, and today was no exception.

Since I got on the water early, and the tide level wasn’t very promising, I paddled to the furthest sinking spot, checking the other spots, as I passed them. When I arrived at the furthest spot (about 2.5 miles), I hung out there long enough to verify that the tide was still going out.

I left that spot and paddled back the way I had come, checking on other spots as I passed them. The tide level dropped about 4 inches from when I started out, until I returned to about 1/2 mile from my put-in. For most of my spots, the tide would have had to drop another 4 inches. It was now about one hour after low tide, so there wasn’t any chance of another 4 inch drop, so I headed to my sinking hole in the woods, because that one has a slightly higher elevation.

I landed my boat on the edge of the woods, off-loaded some gear and headed into the woods. When I got close to my sinking hole, I climbed a big tree to see how much water was there. I can’t just walk up to it, because the ground around it is soft and you sink up to your thighs in some places. I wasn’t satisfied with the view from the tree, so I swung down onto a high spot close to the hole. I then leaned out towards the hole, using a mostly horizontal tree to lean on, and focusing my attention on the depth of the water over my sinking spot. I should probably have looked more closely at the tree I chose to lean on, because as I pulled back, I got bitten on the right thumb by a water moccasin (snake) that had been right under my nose. The old saying, “if it had been a snake it would have bitten you”, turns out to be true. Well, don’t get all worried, the bite was a defensive bite. The snake knew it wasn’t going to eat me, so it didn’t inject any venom. I employed my snakebite kit, just in case, but I could tell by the lack of pain, that the bite was nothing more than a pin-prick.

So, after nursing my wound for longer than it warranted, I got back to the business of setting up to shoot video. I decided to set up a few shots of me, slogging through the swamp and complaining about mud and snakes. Eventually, as you might have come to expect by now, I made my way, by sheer accident, into a really deep spot, from which I would never emerge. I managed to do a slow, steady sink into the thick peat mud. I haven’t watched the video yet (the images here are video frames I just selected quickly from the raw clips), but I think it’s going to be a pretty good quicksand video, that results in my untimely death … again.