It was the first really hot, sultry weekend of the late spring; a perfect time for paddling a canoe around the bayou. The water in the river was falling daily as the spring floods receded, but there was still a good current in the main streambed, and the sun would soon be high enough to keep the mosquitoes in check. Ann easily hoisted her one-woman canoe off the top of her car, carried it twenty feet to the water’s edge, and dropped it in, just as she did almost every weekend in the warm weather. She dropped in a kneepad, her paddle, a water bottle, and a thermos of chili, and pushed off. She was dressed in flip flops and a nylon warm-up suit, as it was still a bit chilly at 6 AM, but underneath she wore only a two-piece bathing suit.. She would paddle for about two hours, take a leisurely brunch and perhaps a swim, and then reverse course and be back at her car by 11 in the morning. That was her plan anyway.

Ann paddled across to the far bank and then followed it upstream, exploring areas she had not seen in a long time. All signs of civilization were soon left behind and she was in a world of reeds, birds, and frogs. This was a world that could only be reached by boat – to get to the area over land would mean slogging across miles of wetland. After two hours Ann was feeling more energetic than usual so she decided to continue, exploring new areas she had not been to ever before. She left the main stream and explored some of the side streams that later in the summer would dry to mere trickles of water. Soon she was well out of the areas that were ever visited by people. The water was still and the riverbank was heavily overgrown by tall grasses and reeds. Here and there she saw a heron or another wading bird hunting in the shallows or an otter playing on the bank. If she stopped paddling there was hardly a sound other than a few birds and an occasional splash of a fish or a frog. Unless another canoeist was on this part of the river there was certainly no other human being within miles in any direction. By now it was quite hot and she had shed the warm-up suit.

Suddenly it was noon and Ann was starting to feel rather hungry. She might have eaten in her canoe but she spotted a convenient sandbar on the far side and paddled over. The sandbar was about thirty-five, or so, feet wide from the water’s edge to the reeds that marked the true bank of the stream. In amongst the reeds there were some interesting, large flowered bushes that attracted her attention. She flipped off her sandals and hopped out a few feet short of the sandbar, then pulled the canoe up on the bank a few feet so it could not drift away. There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. She decided to examine the flowering bushes along the true the shoreline before eating. She turned away from her canoe and began to cross toward the true shore, just thirty feet away. After about ten steps she suddenly pitched forward and the ground gave way beneath her. Her left leg plunged into dark muck almost to her knee. "Arrggh!… Yuck!, she exclaimed in disgust. Then, in continuation of her stumble she stepped once to catch herself and her right leg plunged in half way up her thigh. She froze there for just a second or two and then suddenly plunged to her ribs into the soft mud. "Eeeeeiiiiik!, she screamed. Completely panic stricken she threw herself forward onto her hands and arms but they just plunged into the ooze. "No!, this can’t be happening" she cried to herself. "It’s quicksand!" The entire surface was now liquefied all around her. Everything she tried to grasp or press down on just flowed around her and coated her with goo. She tried to run forward but just ran in place, churning the mud uselessly. She violently clawed the mud with her hands and arms just as uselessly. She could lunge upward or forward slightly but she just sank back even deeper in a few seconds. In just a few seconds she was up to her shoulders in greenish-black, churning mud. "Help!" she cried. "Somebody help me," but, of course, there was no one around to hear her. She clawed and thrashed and struggled and screamed until she was exhausted, but the mud still surrounded her body and threatened to engulf her completely. After awhile Ann stopped struggling, more from exhaustion than from good sense. Then she realized she wasn’t sinking anymore. The mire had swallowed her to her shoulders in a matter of seconds but now she was floating. She calmed down, at least a little.

Once Ann calmed down below the total panic level of arousal she could think more clearly. Reason now told her that mud was a mixture of water and some kind of dirt and therefore had to be denser than her body. Therefore, the laws of physics dictated that she could not sink in mud unless she fell in from a height or actually pulled herself under. In fact, it would be quite difficult to sink or to remain beneath the surface even if she somehow went below the surface. Ann was still shoulder deep in the mire but no longer feared the remainder of her life to be measured in seconds. She began to try to lie back and gradually push herself into a horizontal position. Several times she moved too quickly or lifted herself too high out of the mire and lost her balance, plopping back into a near-vertical, shoulder deep position. Each time this happened, however, she gained confidence that she would not drown in the mud and that she could maneuver through it if she kept her wits. She even began to enjoy the feel of the mud a little.

After half an hour of struggle Ann learned how to get into a horizontal position and crawl forward across the surface of the mire. Finally she was free of the grip of the mire. It was rather easy once she figured out how to do it. She stood up on firm ground for the first time in over an hour and began wiping the gooey mud off her body. While doing so she instinctively stepped away from the now very wet looking pool from which she had just escaped. Suddenly, with a load splat she was chest deep in mud again. Taken completely by surprise for the second time in a little over an hour, Ann thrashed about for a few seconds but quickly regained her composure. She even giggled softly at her own clumsiness in falling into quicksand twice in one day.

Now Ann began to see her situation as rather funny, partly because of her clumsy pratfall back into the mire and partly because of her totally slimed appearance. There she was, alone in the wilderness, dressed only in a moderately sexy two piece bathing suit, covered to the neck in black, gooey mud, and giggling as she did a pratfall up to her chest in mud. She also began to sense her situation as being rather sensuous, if not actually sexy. The mud was extremely smooth and slippery on her skin. It felt cool in comparison to the hot, sultry, afternoon air but it was far from cold. On a cool day it would feel comparatively warm. Tentatively she rubbed some of the mud on her neck and face. The liked the feel of it and tried it some more. She imagined herself as Jane in a Tarzan movie, terror-stricken, thrashing helplessly up to her neck in quicksand and just seconds from going under and found the thought highly erotic. She even pulled herself down in the mud and tilted her head back as if to delay going under completely for a few more seconds. Remembering, as she did this, an old jungle film in which a girl is sucked down completely in quicksand, her eyes bugging out in horror, Ann was aroused almost to the point of orgasm.

Ann actually played around in the mud for only a few minutes, then rather laboriously pulled herself out and onto the firmer bank. As she did so she felt extremely heavy. Looking down at herself she found both the top and the bottom of her bathing suit sagging from a huge load of mud caught in the fabric. The mud felt wildly sexy as it moved and pressed against her more private parts. The thought occurred to her that it would be incredibly exciting to be "rescued" from the quicksand and to then submit passionately to sex with her rescuer, or, maybe, to resist and be forced by her rescuer. Ann immediately dismissed this last thought, however. She had no desire to be raped. Very carefully this time, she picked her way across the sandbar to the water and began to wash herself off. She waded and swam around for a few minutes to remove most of the mud, but it was soon apparent she could not clean off while wearing the bathing suit. She took her top off first. She stayed mostly hunkered down in the water at first, just in case someone might happen by but she soon became more comfortable without her top. It wasn’t too long before she was completely naked and quit comfortable as such.

Ann wasn’t able to clean her bathing suit completely but she got most of the mud off of it. "It’s a good thing it isn’t white," she thought to herself. I’d have to stay out hear until dark if it was. I’d look pretty weird in a mud-colored bathing suit." She returned to her canoe, still naked, then began to put her suit back on. She put on the bottom of her suit, then hesitated. She stood there motionless for a few seconds, then took the bathing suit bottom back off. She put both parts of her suit carefully into the bottom of the canoe. Then she straightened up, turned away from the river, and ran directly toward the quicksand bog. She plunged straight into the same spot she had stirred up in her initial encounter, right up to her armpits in the muck. She flopped around for a few minutes as if struggling helplessly, then quite skillfully pulled herself out. Then she picked her way carefully back to the river, turned back toward the mire and ran back into it again. This time she kept her legs straighter and she went in to her neck before rising back to her buoyancy point. She did this three more times, finding the experience more and more erotic each time. Then she decided to go for the jackpot. Approaching the edge of the now very disturbed quagmire on the run, Ann jumped. She didn’t jump out into the mire, she jumped up, above the mire. She pointed her toes in mid-air and landed straight-legged and nearly vertical, expecting to go in to her chin or even her nose and hoping for even more. She got what she wanted. She went completely under in one swift plunge!

Of course, Ann bobbed back to the surface in just a few seconds, but she found the experience of being totally engulfed by quicksand exhilarating. "Whoa!," she thought, "This is wild!" Over the next half hour Ann repeated what she now called her ‘quicksand plunge’ four more times, succeeding in going under completely in all but one attempt. Finally, however, she had to stop as it was getting late and she would soon be missed. She washed off once more in the river, put her bathing suit back on, and began paddling back toward home. She arrived back at her car well passed six o’clock, more than seven hours later than expected. She concocted a story about stopping for lunch and falling asleep, just in case anyone asked where she had been. She would toss the bathing suit in the trash if it didn’t come clean in the wash. As she pulled out of her parking space she knew one thing for certain. The next time she went canoeing she would be arriving at the parking area at dusk rather than dawn.