On Sunday, April 27, I ventured out to Hunter’s Creek, alone. I went out several hours before low tide, so I put in several miles upstream from the mud spot and paddled further upstream, just beyond a beaver dam. The scenery above the beaver dam was spectacular, and the wildlife was abundant. I got out and walked around a bit, in search of mud, but I didn’t have a lot of time to spend there, if I was going to make it to the place I spotted the day before, which was miles downstream.
I made good time, going back downstream, as the stream was flowing nicely and the tide was going out. I was going about 4 miles per hour, so I arrived at my final mud destination about an hour early. I was going to paddle further downstream and back up, while I waited for the water to drain out of the silty pond, but I got curious about the stream bed that was feeding into the silty pond. I figured this was a result of sedimentation from the fields adjacent to the creek.
I slogged a good distance up the stream; always walking in thigh deep silt with a fairly solid bottom, and a lot of submerged timber. It wasn’t too difficult to walk, since the silt wasn’t very thick. I was forming a picture of what this stream looked like before it filled up with sediment.
After exploring for a while, and rinsing off as well as I could in Hunter’s Creek (that side channel was shallow with a muddy bottom, making it impossible to get clean), I shot a short video-blog clip (pictured in this post), explaining where I was and what I was about to do. As usual, the GoPro recorded very poor audio, so I can barely make out what I said in the video. Then again, who cares what I said; I look pretty good in those wet jeans!
By this time, the pond was draining, so I started to get my audio and video gear set up. It was about 4:00pm, and I had a long way to paddle, against the current, to get back to my car. My first plunge into the mud on camera was pretty dramatic. The mud was about waist deep, but it was so fluid, that I could easily go under with my legs out in front of me. I think it made a pretty convincing quicksand scene.
After I drowned the first time, I slogged around a bit on camera, then I got cleaned up and did one more drowning scene, in the white bikini. The first scene was in jeans, boots, and a cropped t-shirt.
Around 5:00pm, I got cleaned up as well as I could, packed up my gear, and headed out to the main creek where I could find deeper water to get really clean. I paddled hard and arrived back at the car around 6:30, with plenty of daylight to spare. It was quite and expedition.