Circa 2008...this was about 45 minutes in...he got one leg on the board...didn't want to lose his new boots...still digging for his next foot. There is about a 3 foot cut into the duff at that filter fence. The whole fill was basically liquefied from a month of hard rain. Perhaps he could have laid back and kind of swum out, his head would have just about hit the filter fence...maybe his shoulders, but his boots would have stayed...he fought hard for the boots. I tried to help, then stood off because it would have meant two people stuck. As a good friend, I did take pictures.?ÿ
Before I began my survey career?ÿ proper (1980'ish) I worked in mining exploration in Canada. One particular job was in the Macmillan Pass of the NW Territories, near the Yukon border. And it was late October. Daytime highs were still around the freezing mark. Ponds would ice over but not enough yet to walk on, but within days we knew it would be solid.?ÿ The whole valley was muskeg - which is basically a floating layer of moss. You can sort of walk on the thickest parts as long as you keep moving but..... We had just about completed the work on the mountain slopes above.?ÿ
We couldn't really walk on the muskeg without sinking so the plan was to set stakes in it on a grid pattern, wait for it to freeze hard, then we could go on the ice to do the geophysics. One guy was detailed with a bag of stakes, hip waders, compass, and hip chain. The rest of us where helicoptered off to our daily assignments.?ÿ
Well, our hapless guy got just a few hundred feet from camp when he found himself sunk up to his hips in the muskeg. The weight of 32.1?øF water trapped him in the waders. People drove by on the road a few hundred feet away, saw him waving, and waved back. Helicopters flew overhead and responded the same. He was just out of shouting range of camp (especially with all the generators running).?ÿ These were days before cell phones -as if there would be any service in that part of the world.?ÿ Finally, after a couple of hours and near hypothermic our man managed to force a hand down to his hip pocket and got his knife out, cut himself out of the waders, and basically swam back to camp. He spent the rest of the day hugging the airtight stove in the cook shack trying to get warm again.?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ?ÿ
When I was with the highway department one of our thankless duties was to measure timber snags on the upstream side of the bridge structures.?ÿ The contracts we let by the C.Y. and we would dance around on the deadfall with a reflector with the gunner recording our shots as quick as he could.?ÿ We could knockout maybe 3 a day.?ÿ After the field work it was just a simple task to build a digital model and calculate the volumes.
It was early February near Braman, OK (6.5 miles south of the Kansas line) at the I-35 crossing over the Chickaskia River.?ÿ Recent floods had packed the timber tight up against the bridge piers.?ÿ In an effort to move things along a little quicker I grabbed a reflector rod so we could have 2 men on the pile and keep the instrument man busy.
The high that day was about 10 above.?ÿ The river was pretty much frozen over with a strong current running beneath.?ÿ I stepped on a trunk, it rolled and my world went black as there was no light under the timber snags and ice. Being immersed in freezing water feels like an electric shock all over your body.?ÿ I somehow had my arms raised with the rod still clenched in my hands.?ÿ Luckily the rod protruded enough out of the mess for one of my men to see me.?ÿ He grabbed the rod, I felt it tug and I held on as he pulled me up.
When you're about to die 20 seconds in blackness feels like eternity.?ÿ My face, hands and overalls were frozen in seconds after they dragged me out.?ÿ I couldn't talk or catch my breath.?ÿ All I could do was shiver all over.?ÿ I was told they carried me up the slope to the truck.?ÿ All I remember was trying to tell someone I was shivering so hard I couldn't breath.?ÿ I blacked out because I couldn't catch my breath during the 12 mile trip south to the hospital in Blackwell.?ÿ It scared everybody because they told me I was blue.
A few hours later with some IV fluids and blankets I was my usual self trying to get the phone number of a couple of the pretty nurses.?ÿ The doc said I would be sore the next few days.?ÿ I laughed it off and had every intention of being at work the next day.
For the life of me I could not get out of bed the next morning.?ÿ For the next week I was cold and felt like I had run a marathon.?ÿ Doc was right...
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Didn't include any mud, but neighbor went out one morning during deer season and heard a faint "HELP" coming from the woods behind his house. He and his son followed the sound and found a rather heavy fellow who had used a climbing stand to get about 20' up a tree before somehow falling backwards with his feet still in the straps. So he was hung upside down with his feet strapped down flat on top of the stand. He couldn't swing himself back up enough to get loose. So they went back and got the tallest ladder they had. ?ÿIt was just long enough they could stand on top and barely reach the straps. He was too heavy and exhausted to help himself and insisted they just cut him loose. So they cut one foot loose, told him to get ready, and cut the other one loose. They said he did almost a perfect somersault and roll when he hit the ground. Rescue squad arrived shortly after and hauled him off. Never heard how he made out, he wasn't a local and didn't have permission to hunt where he was.?ÿ
I'd be so annoyed I'd take the rest of the day off, maybe the next day too.?ÿ When mother nature gives you a big finger you gotta do what you gotta do to bring balance to the force.
I'd be so annoyed I'd take the rest of the day off, maybe the next day too.?ÿ When mother nature gives you a big finger you gotta do what you gotta do to bring balance to the force.
That's funny you put it that way.?ÿ It's not that much different than the way I look at our 'physical world'.
Mother Nature is powerful and mysterious woman.?ÿ And I believe she loves those of us that sense and respect her beauty and power.?ÿ We therefore probably get away with a few things that other people (not in her favor) might not be able to.
But like any woman she can be prone to showing her displeasure with us from time to time.?ÿ And again, like any women, you might want to avoid the general proximity if she's throwing daggers in your direction.?ÿ Time to make yourself not so visible for a day or two. 😉
I had a chainman get stuck in the mud once. I was standing right there but he was maybe too embarrassed to ask for help and I did not want to offer until he asked because I figured everyone knew how to extract themselves, this was just construction site mud not quicksand or anything. By the time he was no longer standing and had on leg in to the thigh I broke the awkwardness by offering and assisting.?ÿ
You gotta roll on your feet a little, stamping up and down will just make it worse.
The next time you have a helper that you feel could be doing better just remember; you could have one who needs help walking.
Isn't the theory that - contrary to all those B&W movies with the villains disappearing into the earth - you wont go under in quicksand because it has a lot greater density than water??ÿ
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/quicksand
"For many of us, quicksand was once a real fear -- it held a vise-grip on our imaginations, from childish sandbox games to grown-up anxieties about venturing into unknown lands. But these days, quicksand can't even scare an 8-year-old. In this short, we try to find out why.
Producer Soren Wheeler introduces us to Dan Engber, writer and columnist for Slate, who ran across a strange fact: kids are no longer afraid of quicksand. To figure out what happened to quicksand, Dan immersed himself in research, compiled mountains of data, and met with quicksand fetishists. Dan tells Soren and Robert about his journey, and shares his theory about why the terror of his childhood seems to have lost its menacing allure. And Carlton Cuse, best-known as writer and executive producer of Lost, weighs in on whether giant pits of hero-swallowing mud might one day creep back into the spotlight."
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