Quicksand!!

Although it rained a few days ago, I thought it was cold enough to walk the dogs in the inlets today. I should explain that we live on a TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority)) lake. This lake was formed by building a dam and flooding part of the countryside. The water level is lowered in the fall until our section of the lake looks like a small river. Our street runs down the middle of a peninsula into the lake, our property is on one inlet and the folks across the road are on another inlet. During the winter, the inlets are almost completely dry, and they are very interesting to walk in.

First we walked down our neighbor's driveway to check out their house (they were out of town). After walking around the house, we headed down the hill to their pier. The ramp to the dock was pretty steep since there isn't any water in the inlet and the dock is sitting on the bottom. Although there was a thin layer of frost on the ramp, I thought it would be OK to walk on... oooh, was I wrong! Puppy and Casey walked on OK, and I gingerly stepped out- with the first footstep I though, "this might not be a good idea" and as soon as I put my second foot down, we all started to slide down the ramp like skiers on a ski jump! I knew there was a small gap between the ramp and the dock, and didn't want any of us to get caught in that- so about halfway down I flung myself off the side, Casey and I fell together and Puppy leaped on his own. We were all OK, although my behind was a little sore where I fell...

We continued on our walk, it was such a beautiful cool morning, sunny and bright. I had on my long winter coat so was warm as could be. As we walked out of the inlet, Puppy decided he wanted to go towards the lake to check it out. Fine, no problem. We had to step across a winding rivulet about 6 inches wide on the way. The ground was frozen with a thin sheet of ice covering it. As I stepped over the rivulet again, I heard a "crack" and my foot went through the ice and into the mud underneath it- up to my knee. I couldn't get my foot out! It felt like it was in glue! As I tried to pull, my other foot broke through too, and I fell so I was sitting on the ice.
Of course, there was no one around. I thought about calling Harry on the cell phone (that we bought mostly for when I'm walking the dogs) but knew it would take him probably 20 minutes to get to where I was. Then I got the bright idea of trying to walk in the rivulet... I pulled out my second foot, and stepped into the water- and my foot sunk up to mid calf! I started feeling pretty desperate and Puppy must have realized that. He walked over on the ice, reared up on his back legs , then pounced, using his front feet to break a hole in the ice. Not helping!
After he did it a second time, I said "NO!" and he seemed to get the hint.

Somehow I remembered some nature show I had seen long ago that said you could swim out of quicksand by moving slowly- so I lay down on my back, and made some mighty pulls until I got my feet out (what a relief that was) and then shimmied along on my back until I made it to drier ground. Then I had to walk home! The amazing part was that even though my legs and shoes were covered with mud, my feet were dry! (Yay, Nike tennies!) Still, cleaning up was a mess!