Stuck in the mud

While Calvin takes the high ground, I move into the muck. Photos by David Lansing.

After Hardy scared off the herd of buffalos with his cough, we continued on around the lake shore, passing, at one point, a pair of elephants who caught our scent and disappeared back into the forest. We slowly descended down towards the meadow, staying low, our heads just below the sight line of the heavy bush ringing the meadow.

The buffs—I counted 22 of them—stood still, their noses raised, facing our direction. When we got to within a hundred feet of them a big bull snorted and turned and the herd romped at a quick clip away from us and towards the northern shore.

We decided to give up stalking the buffs and to explore deeper into the marshy meadow where we thought we saw the bone-white remains of perhaps a buffalo. The mounds of coarse grass gave way to reeds and then semi-hard fields of mud that had the viscosity of modeling clay with deep impressions of where elephants had walked that morning.

Hardy comes across an old buffalo skull.

On a rock in the muck was the lower jaw of a bushbuck. We moved deeper into the mud and water trying to identify the other remains. Hardy came across the skull of a buff. At this point I was sinking a foot or more into the muddy bottom of the remnant lake with every step. The others had turned around and slowly retraced their steps through the mud out of the wettest part of the meadow but I decided to continue forward, thinking it was a shorter route, which was a mistake.

The mud got deeper and before long I was stepping into muck up to my knees and having to take several minutes just to extricate myself before I could move on. And then I took a tenuous step forward and began to sink, deep, deep, deep, going midway to my thigh, the vacuum suck of the mud so great I was immobilized like a fly in amber. There was no possibility of me pulling myself out.

The rest of the group had retreated to higher ground and were now gathered together, maybe a hundred feet away, looking at me, waiting for me to continue. But I could not. I didn’t call for help or do anything really. I just looked in their direction, breathing heavily, trying to stay calm, and they looked back at me. Some time went on and then I saw Calvin hand his gun off to Hardy and slowly start back across the muck, slipping into water almost up to his waist, as he made his way towards me. When he finally reached me his face was red and beads of sweat were dripping from his bald head.

He asked me if I was alright and I said fine, except I couldn’t move, and we both were silent, trying to catch our breath and figure out what to do. Calvin moved around me until he found a spot that seemed more solid than others and then told me to try and rock myself back and forward until I could point my foot down, like a ballerina, and when I was finally able to do that, he planted his two legs in the muck like tree stumps and pulled both my arms mightily until I slowly came out of the sucking mud. Then we both just stood there panting and breathing hard, bent over at the waist. After we were able to catch our breath again, Calvin took a small step forward and told me to try and follow in his path and ever-so-slowly we tiptoed through the mud and muck and ooze until we made it back to where the others were standing on higher ground. I couldn’t stop trembling and I didn’t know if it was from exhaustion or from the fear of being encased in mud up to my crotch, knowing elephants and buffalos were just on the edge of the forest watching us, or maybe both. Probably both.

We slowly headed across the meadow towards the far shore where Keith was watching us through the binoculars. And then we headed back towards camp.