My wife, on a regular basis, gives me a lot of grief for things I do and stuff I buy. This, dear Mumpers, is the story of how my quirkiness had a big payoff.
Of late, I’ve been buying stuff aimed at outdoors skills and bushcraft. Why, you ask? In my old age, I’ve started working on my bucket list, and I have two items I want to mark off quickly. The first is to go backpacking, and the other is to bicycle camp. My arthritis is getting worse, and I want to do both while I still can. Since last fall, I’ve been outfitting first for the hike, and second for the bike tour. Because I live in a coastal area subject to hurricanes and the like, I’ve also become somewhat of a light prepper because a lot of the equipment and skills are common to all 3 endeavors. I have quite the collection of bushcraft books, and today one of them saved me.
I go fishing on Sunday mornings at the local state park. It was windy, so the fishing sucked, with only 3 small bluegills taking my bait. I was moving around the inlet I like, and got to the back end where there are some lily pads that I was hoping harbored crappies. One cast went awry, and wound up in a snag. Damn.
I moved around to try to finesse my hook out, but the line broke. Fortunately, my slip bobber came free, and I was determined to grab it because it was my last one, and they are rare around here. It washed up about 30 feet away from me. Kewl, or so I thought. As I got closer, the bank got soggier and soggier, but the debris looked OK, and I took the step only to find myself up to my right knee in mucky quicksand, and I was going deeper by the second. That debris I made the mistake of trusting hid a little stream that I would have avoided naturally if I had seen it, precisely for the exact situation I found myself in.
My left foot was free, so I got it onto some wood and stopped sinking. My right foot was stuck but maneuverable, but if I wasn’t careful I was going to lose my shoe, and being a diabetic in the woods barefoot was not an option. I had to get my right leg free, and my manky old sneaker had to be on my foot.
One of my books I bought and read had the answer. People have gotten stuck like that with boots that could not come off, and the trick was to use a stick or something else to break the vacuum. Stick it in the mud directly beside the boot, wiggle the boot and wiggle the stick. As you pull up with your foot, the stick allows the water to flow into the void underneath. Oddly enough, the stick I grabbed was an improvised fish gig someone had made and I saw in another book. It took me about 5 minutes of work, but I was free and I had my shoe. I was now stranded on a couple pieces of driftwood. It took me another minute to find a path through the brush on solid ground to get back to my pack and tackle box. I was done for the day after that. Went home to a hot shower and clean duds, and spent some time hosing off my old clothes to get them clean enough to wash. :rolleyes:
Was I scared? No. Mad? Somewhat, for being stupid and cheap. Embarrased? Hell yeah. I failed that part of Bushcraft 101 by not recognizing the danger. I was also proud of me for saying nothing more than some choice four letter words instead of “HELP!!!”, and getting out of a situation by keeping my cool.
But I’ll be damned if I try to fish those lily pads ever again.
Glad it ended up being an entertaining story!