Re: [Paddlewise] mud

At 07:52 AM 5/26/98 +0000, you wrote:

Boy, was that ever a big mistake.
>     Willapa Bay mud is real gooey, sucking mud. You put your foot 
>in, and it doesn't want to come out. It pulls the Teva sandals right 
>off your feet. In a matter of minutes, you and everything you own get 
>caked in thick, rich , black, smelly, slimey gunk. And that's just in 
>the first few minutes. Pulling a kayak across mud is work. And 
>dangerous too. There's no guarantee you will ever get out of that 
>morass. 
>     I suppose it took an hour or more to cross that mud flat. 


        Yo! Professor. . . 
        Locally we have a lake were they "pull the plug" and run the water
level down about 25 feet so the residents can repair docks. When I was nine
--about 40 years ago-- a friend of mine and I decided that hiking across the
mud flats of the lake would be much faster than hiking around the perimeter.
The short story is that the local fire department had to bring out a ladder
and ropes to pull me out of a hip deep suck-hole that I got myself snared in
for well over two hours. Of course The Oregonian had an article: "Mud Snares
Second Boy." I took some consolation in not being the only victim of getting
"sucked in" with the idea of crossing the mud flats. 

        I can't believe that you didn't get mired so deep that it would
become the lead on the local news. Willapa Bay has mud flats like none I've
seen. In some places they're fine for digging shellfiss, but they're
potentially dangerous! The bay is great when it has lots of water in it, but
when it's empty it can really suck! (Couldn't pass up that pun!) 

        Geo. 

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