Swamp Olympics

A 3 part story about southern summer challenges

“Dude, I read somewhere that you got like two minutes to live.”

This is what one of my friends told me one balmy southern Mississippi afternoon. I knew better, even then, but the declaration did little to make me feel better because death, of course, was a real possibility.

My friends and I were a typical bunch at our age for the region in which we lived. Many of the stereotypes people hear about young southern boys running amuck were not too far from the truth.

I was a lean rough and tumble young man with shaggy, sun-bleached hair. The sun had also left its mark on my skin leaving me deeply tanned. So, picture this. A young boy with shaggy blonde hair wearing faded cut-off shorts with the dirt of southern Mississippi smeared all along the creases of my face and wrists while running down a dirt track with no shoes or shirt waiving the newest, best stick I could find like a deranged knight of old. That was me.

I was a boy that could not be told that a single thing was dangerous unless I myself confirmed it was so. This was apparent through all of my misadventures and blatant disregard of warnings and rules laid out for me by the people who cared for me. For now, I will address one moment, in a particularly eventful summer, where through no fault of my own (I swear), I almost met my end.

My friend and I were quite the pair. We did most things together and this day was no different. I woke early in the morning like I did most days and left the house running. At this point in my life, I could not be bothered with things so mundane as cartoons or eating breakfast. Especially this day as I knew that on the way my friend and I would be able to fill our bellies with the massive field of wild blackberries that we had discovered the prior summer.

My friend lived about a mile away so that morning I tore off down the road running as fast as my legs could pump. Upon arrival, I knocked on the door ever so lightly as I knew my friend would be waiting for me but neither of us wanted a tag-a-long brother and we DAMN sure did not want the tag-a-long younger sister. Operation “no weirdos” was a success and we set off on our adventure.

That day was to be a good one because we had planned to go crawfish hunting and frog gigging down near the swamp. There was a fairly large chasm with a two-foot deep slow moving stream at the bottom that emptied into the aforementioned swamp. It was there that we would walk/wade our way up the stream and hunt our prey.

The day was going well. It was only like ninety-five degrees with eighty-percent humidity or something like that. The slightly overcast breezeless swamp weather was nothing for two boys with blackberry stained fingers and a mission to find the “mother” of all craw-dads. That was until IT happened.

My friend and I were walking at the bottom of the ravine where the middle of the stream diverged slightly to form two streams around a sandbar. On each side of the sandbar was perfectly clear water that was about a foot deep. It was quite easy to see the crawfish scatter as our shadow passed over them on our trek. We had already collected a whole “crap-ton” and now we were cherry picking. Looking for the biggest most impressive ones to capture.

We came upon a downed pine tree that had broken and fell across the area but left the sandbar mostly clear minus a few branches with stiff pine needles. As I walked around one of these branches I felt something poke my ankle.

Now, having been the victim of many a pine-needle stabbing in my life both accidental and forced by friends, I knew and recognized the sharp itchy jab. I casually kicked my leg out to knock away the offending needles so I could continue my path. That’s when I kicked something with a solid smacking sound that absolutely did NOT feel like a tree branch or pine needles. That’s when my day changed.

Looking down I was quite surprised to see the largest Cottonmouth I had ever seen in my life. Now the irony in this moment came about two-fold. First, by that point in my life, I had caught and played with more poisonous snakes than I'd had hot meals and had never been bitten. Secondly, I had never frozen a minute in my life. I had seen some pretty scary stuff in my life and been through quite a bit and never do I remember absolutely freezing like I did in that moment. In my defense, I was kind of confused. It was supposed to have been pine needles after all.

So, irony aside, I looked at the snake comically shaking its head and weaving drunkenly obviously trying to clear its head from a bony foot to the face. Sadly, it got its bearings before I and proceeded to take another bite of my ankle. Yes, I just stood there replaying the feeling of the “pine needles” stabbing my ankle in my head only to get bit again. I put three and one together as my brain finally processed the fact that the second bite felt suspiciously like the aforementioned “pine needles” that had horribly turned out to be a snake. Yup my logic was sound. I had been struck. Twice.

I yelled out to my friend in front of me the obvious words in this situation. Most of which I will not repeat here. However, I will share that “snake” and “run” were in there somewhere. He, of course, stood there looking confused as I ran towards him all the while trying to figure out why I was suddenly “scared” of a snake instead of conscripting him to help acquire said fiend.

I pushed him forward and said some other choice words that translated roughly as ‘really huge’ and 'bit me'. We took off running down the sandbar full throttle. We both knew that scaling the side of the ravine was necessary to get out of the water and to safety. We chose an opportune moment as the stream narrowed to jump the water and splatter ourselves against the wall of the chasm.

I was understandably more motivated than he and somehow scaled the side using tree roots and handholds like a freak of nature. My friend was not so lucky. The roots didn’t hold and the dirt collapsed. He panicked and began power-wading up the stream for another spot to climb out and I followed giving advice and pointing at likely handholds. After about twenty feet it was like the hounds of hell had been set to baying.

Screaming bloody murder my friend began to practically walk on water as he ran at the wall again. My first thought was that he too had seen a snake. That’s when two things happened. First, I noticed an insane stream of blood trailing out behind him and a fairly large chunk of glass poking up out of the sand underwater. Secondly, he had no problem scaling the brittle root-riddled wall. Apparently, he too had found sufficient motivation to make the climb.

When he got to the top he collapsed in a wail of pain as blood poured from the bottom of his foot. I snatched his T-shirt from his back pocket and a blue bandanna from mine. I folded the bandanna a tight as I could into a square the size of the gash on the bottom of his foot and pushed hard. He held it in place while I wrapped his shirt around the foot to hold pressure and the bandanna in place.

Believe it or not all of this occurred in a matter of maybe two minutes. But two minutes was all it took for the pain to set in on my ankle. After we both made the decision that he was going to live I proffered my already swollen and throbbing ankle where there were three tiny red dots providing validation for my initial freak out.

Apparently, the second strike was off a little as the poor bas...critter had brain damage from my foot and only got me with one fang the second time. Either way, mere seconds after clearing my friend to live and playing field doctor to his injury he declared in a serious but self-aggrandizing fashion that only the young can seem to manage when they think they know everything, "Dude, I read somewhere...

...to be continued next week.

I was asked recently by someone, "I like your blog posts but I like the stories about your past the most. Why don't you write another one of those?"

A question and a request nice and tidy.

Feel free to drop me a line with your own questions or requests.

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

You speak my language. Change the hair color to dark brown, and that was me. My rural Arkansas youth consisted of living outdoors in the summer, exploring, fishing and generally messing around, the more of the same in winter, but with a .22 in my hand, trying to shoot something to eat. Like you, I couldn't help but attack every snake I ever saw. A water moccasin nearly got me once, but I brained it with a stick. This is a highly enjoyable tale.