Tethered To The Logic

There were childhood obsessions with things like lava rocks (which I grew out of) and sharks (which I did not), and I remember a passing fancy for quicksand as well.

The 7 year old Billy version of quicksand was an almost sentient thing, a pit that patiently awaited some poor traveler, complete with pith helmet, to enter and sink. I imagined the shrieks of the trapped, traveling unnoticed through the jungle swampland. I did a small amount of research on quicksand, and what the 7 year old Billy retained from this, was that quicksand is often made when an underground spring over saturates some sand and turns said turf into a funnel of wet death.

Oh, and I remember quite clearly a pencil drawing of someone caught in quicksand laying on their back with arms in a “Y”. Apparently this is how one survived the death sucking of a pit of quicksand, do an impromptu back float until a boy scout came along with a 2x4 to assist in pulling you out.

Okay, apparently I believed that quicksand pulled you down into the crushing depths of thick wetness, slowly crushing the very life out of you. I imagined being pulled finally into the very underground spring, thick and wet sand flowing from nostrils no longer in use, being pulled along to a dark place that my child's mind feared to ponder.

It was like being pulled to the other side of a black hole... what was there?

I'm now strong enough to know that the quicksand spring created the quicksand in order to pull passerby into it's devious springy-ness, carrying the body to a factory 3 miles below the earth where sightless midgets with 3 arms and antennae harvested the bodies for precious chemicals; chemicals that would be used for warfare with the surface.

I think what still sort of attracts me to the idea of quicksand is the symbolism: A mire that traps within the jungle of the subconscious.

I was more than a little disappointed to find out that there are no known deaths due to quicksand. In fact, one would have to be suicidal and borderline mentally retarded to be killed in quicksand. Apparently quicksand is typically only a couple feet deep, and while struggling can pull one further down, quicksand apparently does not behave like some soil snake sucking you beneath it's gritty mouth. Apparently if you were to just calm your happy ass down, your body would float to the surface.

So, the key to surviving quicksand, and most anything else in life, is to just relax.