{"id":1714,"date":"2012-08-16T20:48:14","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T00:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/?p=1714"},"modified":"2012-08-16T20:49:33","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T00:49:33","slug":"quicksand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/?p=1714","title":{"rendered":"Quicksand!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"splash<\/a>There is nothing quite like jumping into soupy, bottomless mud, with a 35 pound lead weight in tow. I’m probably lucky I didn’t just go right under.<\/p>\n

This all started when I remembered, at the last minute, that I wanted to catch the low tide at 16:00, today. It was already 16:00 when I remembered. I didn’t actually get to the mud until almost 17:00, so I missed at least half of the low tide.<\/p>\n

I packed lite in the camera department, but I drug along the 35 pound lead weight, so I could get dragged under the bottomless muck. The animated gif on the left is a few frames from the video camera from when I first jumped in with the weight. I was prepared to fight to regain the surface, but the weight didn’t quite drag me completely under … at least, not before I had some time to struggle, and gasp for air. The video won’t be very long. You’re probably lucky I’m even here to tell the story. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Once I finished my quicksand scene, I detached my weight and dragged myself out of that mud hole. The tide was already coming in, so I moved over to a nearby mud hole that has a few inches higher elevation. The other mud hole was awesome. The mud was thick, warm, and inviting. It just wrapped around me and sucked me under. I used the weight there, also, just for fun (off camera). Once I dragged myself out of that, I went to retrieve the weight, but the knot I tied slipped (I neglected to tie a bowline, even though I knew I should … putting mud on a nylon rope is like greasing a Teflon pan) and the weight sank deep into the quagmire. I dove down for it, but I could not reach it, so I grabbed my breathing tube from the boat, which was about 8 feet away, and I dove back in, headfirst, pulling myself deeper and deeper, and groping blindly in the thick mud, until I snagged the weight and dragged it back to the surface. I couldn’t lose my lead weight. It would be hard to replace. It’s too bad I didn’t get video of the rescue.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, I grabbed a quick video of me sinking in that body swallowing mud, without the weight. I’m not sure how that video will come out, because the sun came out while I was recording. It is kind of ironic that the sun may have ruined that shot, because a few minutes later it started raining. I got all of my gear into it’s protective cases and got myself ready to return to civilization. The tide was coming in fast, so I had no problem paddling out. I got cleaned up, as the rain got heavier. By the time I realized I had left my boat shoes at the muddying spot, it was pouring down. I paddled the short distance back to where I left my shoes, fetched them, and paddled back to my car. As it turns out, I was in the only spot in the county where it rained. I returned home, not 2 miles away, and it hadn’t rained a drop, there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is nothing quite like jumping into soupy, bottomless mud, with a 35 pound lead weight in tow. I’m probably lucky I didn’t just go right under. This all started when I remembered, at the last minute, that I wanted to catch the low tide at 16:00, today. It was already 16:00 when I remembered. … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deepmud","category-immersion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1714"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1720,"href":"https:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714\/revisions\/1720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mudlover.com\/theswamp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}