John Marsh decides to backtrack into his "short cut" through the marsh. The short cut is a channel that is filled with sucking muck; sometimes bottomless. John has to slip under fallen trees and drag his boat over log jams, but the hardest part is walking in the mud without getting mired down and hopelessly stuck.

The point of this trip is to explore some mud that he has gone past on previous trips in the other direction, but was too exhausted to explore, or the incoming tide had already inundated it with water. So, he stops to sink in a half dozen different spots with different co... Show more