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Lost

I almost hate to bring this one up, 'cause I've been lost soooo many times. Most of these instances of bewilderment came on backpacking trips (I've been lost twice on high desert trips and running short on water - not a good combination) or on shuttles or road trips.

Getting lost on a river isn't usually that big a deal, unless you overshoot the take out or inadvertently run some nasty section you had intended to portage or line. But I do a lot of trips in swamps or marshes, where there are lots and lots of possible route choices and bifurcations and sloughs. It's easy to get lost in such a locale, when you don't have any landmarks other than endless vistas of spartina grass or cypress trees, more cypress tress and still more cypress trees.

The most memorable of the lost-while-paddling episodes came on a trip into the mangrove Swamps in Florida. I'd driven down non-stop from Maryland with an old girlfriend, twenty-some hours behind the wheel. We got to our jumping off point at Collier-Seminole State Park, where we'd intended to car camp, rest and regroup before paddling in, only to find that campsite fees totaled nearly $20. In 1985 money. Ain't no way I'm shelling out $20 to camp; the paddle-in backcountry sites are free and $20 will buy a lot of beer.

"Let's get the boat down and packed, we're paddling in today".

We load our gear and I take one last look at the tide charts and map. Off we go into the mangrove swamp. Guess what you see in mangrove swamps? Why mangrove trees, of course. And, when you've seen one mangrove tree, you've seen 'em all. And when you've seen 10,000 mangrove trees, and you've been awake for 24 hours, and you really didn't spend much time studying the map or tide charts before starting off…yer screwed.

And so one wrong turn followed another as we meandered through the mangrove swamp, trying to become unlost. Finally, finally, we managed to backtrack to a point that I recognized, find our location of the map and get reoriented.

We have one last obstacle to cross before reaching a backcountry campsite, a mile-wide lake. A shallow lake. Very shallow. The Park brochure warns paddlers to avoid crossing this lake except at high tide. Had we not been lost for several hours we might have arrived at the lake at high tide. Or maybe not; I'm infamous for misinterpreting tide tables and conversions.

T'any rate, half way across this lake the tide ran out and we were mud bound in 1" of water suspended atop four feet of mud. Lovely mud. Mud with the consistency of fine, fluffy chocolate mousse, but a little less firm.

The Florida sun is beating down and we're stuck in the mud. Remembering Bogie in The African Queen I slipped over the side, sank up to my chest in the mousse-mud and began to heave the canoe forward a few inches at a time. Then I'd grasp the stern, pull myself out of the mud, plant myself in the mud again and repeat. And repeat and repeat, moving a few inches with each effort. Only half a mile to go.

My companion, seated in the bow, takes this opportunity to read to me from the Park brochure, making sure to alternately concentrate on the couple of paragraphs about how dozens of people become lost each year in the swamps and need to be rescued and the bold-print warnings about alligators on Lake Mousse-Mud.

I ain't 'fraid of no alligators! Well, I wasn't until I pushed the boat into a spot where the water was a little deeper and something quite large began thrashing about just below the surface.

Although I was standing in mousse-mud up to my chest, when this thrashing commenced I miraculously shot out of the mud and into the canoe. I came out so fast I could see the mud-mold of my lower torso slowly filling in behind the canoe. I think I may have said a bad word too.

I enjoyed a lengthy respite in the canoe, while we debated the relative merits of dying slowly of sunstroke versus being eaten by an alligator. Since the critter thrashing had ceased and the sun continued to scald down I went back over the side into the mousse-mud.

Heave ho, an inch at a time, all through the afternoon, the routine broken only when I'd push the canoe into a hole which would startlingly begin to froth and churn, whereupon I'd shoot out of the mud and back into the canoe, practicing my profanity.

In this manner we ever so slowly crossed Lake Mousse-Mud, until the tide turned sufficiently to float our boat and we at last made our way into camp, badly sunburned, stinking of mud and exhausted.

But I had my twenty dollars worth of beer damn it!

(BTW, we later discovered that those thrashing-but-unseen critters were probably carp, not 'gators. Although, later on this same trip, I did manage to run the bow of my canoe smack into a large alligator in the Everglades while busy paging through a field guide, trying to identify a Purple Gallinule…but that is another story).

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