On Getting Stuck In The Mud And Waiting For The Tide

My sister has been in town recently and we've been doing some kayaking in the coves and creeks around Toad Hall.

Kayaks only require only a few inches of water to float. You can take them up narrow creeks at low tide and over salt marshes and beaches at high tide. And if you get stuck, you can pick them up and carry them to the next body of water.

Yesterday we headed out at low tide and paddled through some choppy surf. Nothing too dangerous, but there was enough wind to drive us into the calm of a nearby harbor. A lot of the creek-beds were dripping and exposed, but we made our way below the level of marsh grass in a lazy loop around a central island, to circle back an hour later to a passage which would normally take us home.

I guess we mis-timed the tide a bit. Water takes a little longer to wind its way into out of the way places. Before long our keels were knocking against the periwinkles in the mud, and we came to a gentle stop.

At this point we had three choices.

1. Circle all the way back the way we came.
2. Pick up the Kayaks and slog along on foot.
3. Wait for the tide.

We kicked up our feet for a while and listened to the gentle lapping of the water flowing in. I jammed my paddle into the mud to hold the boat in place while looking around in the hazy sunshine in a narcoleptic half-slumber. The pattern of ripples moving on water gives you the impression you're going somewhere, when you're not. I found this illusion of motion comforting, somehow.

Here's what we got to see, by sitting still:

• Armies of fiddler crabs moving through the grass alongside the banks. At first a flash of motion, a white claw raised. Then the ground comes alive with their migration, blue-black shiny bodies fluttering like a carpet.
• Snowy Egrets, perched in trees like white flags of surrender. Then, in the distance, a whole flock of them circling and settling in.
• An osprey aloft, holding position against the wind with absolute stillness, while others of its species screeched and circled somewhere behind.
• Several species of sandpiper having a field day in the exposed mud-flats. Such curious birds, pointing their long beaks about like magic wands.
• A banner-towing Cessna airplane dragging its advertisement along the coast, too far for me to read without my glasses. Such a slow, labored flight into the wind, then, when it banked and returned, gone in seconds.
• A piping plover searching along the bank. White bellied and yellow legged, with its distinctive black necklace, the whole bird smaller than a fist. It was gone as soon as it felt my eyes upon it, letting out its eerie "peep" from the grasses beyond.
• A platoon of periwinkles making their way up my paddle, so the blade of it was covered with them when I withdrew it from the mud.
• An empty oyster shell flopping in the returning tide as though it were alive. A hermit crab, in its own smaller shell, scampering out.
• And heard: the distant warble of the ice-cream truck, repeating a melody of unrelenting cheerfulness as it served the public beach outside the harbor, otherwise hidden from us by dunes and grass. The screeching of daughters as their fathers tossed them into the waves, then rushed back begging to be thrown again. But not seen: another human being in 100 acres of marsh.

I think we made the right choice, sitting still. A lazy hour stolen from the exigencies of motion and need. It was worth even the sunburn.