Slip sliding away

Katrina moved north still potent. It crossed the plains, a continent wide swath of cloud. The cold edge of the north woods halted the progress and rain fell long and hard. Rita soon followed...

A small laugh of disbelief escaped, and I clamped down on my emotions before hysteria set in. I leaned forward at an odd angle, feeling my right leg sink a little deeper and tried to pull my left leg free of the mud. I could feel the muscles in my back start to cramp and I stopped. My left leg hadn't moved and now my right leg was buried to the hip.

I forced calm, took a moment. Suddenly the facts coalesced - the huge pond where normally there was an outwash prairie, the suddenly steeper face of the hill, the oddly angled patch of mud I had stupidly decided to cross...

Fear surged and I struggled crazily to free my leg. Nothing. The implications of being in the middle of a mudslide started to bubble up. The hill could slide again and I could be buried - the mud I was trapped in could slide into the newly formed pond, taking me with it... I resisted the urge to try muscling my way free despite the urgency - strength wasn't going to free me.

I breathed deep, suddenly realized I was within a half mile of an office skyscraper - I started to laugh, overcome with the irony that after the thousands of backcountry miles I've logged I might die within sight of a major metro area.

The laugh allowed me to think and I realized it was my shoe that was locked in the mud. I flexed my foot, wriggled my toes. I could feel mud slip into the shoe. I stopped, thought, realized the hole would quickly fill, realized I was too cheap to give up a fifty dollar shoe without a fight. I torqued my torso as far as I could, gave a twist and heave and my foot pulled free of my shoe and with a squishy sucking sound my leg was out of the ground.

I jammed my arm into the hole, my cheek pressed into the muck. I felt the edge of the shoe, worked my fingers till I had a good grip. Slowly, slowly, I twisted and torqued, freed it from the hole. It was filled and heavy. I threw it out past the edges of the slide. I repeated the process with my right foot, throwing that shoe too.

I lay prone, half submerged. I wriggled, stroked, slowly moving forward and suddenly I was at the edge. I rolled off, grabbed my shoes and gave them another toss, then followed them up the hill, hoping I was out of the path of any possible slides.

As I pulled on my shoes I realized it had been only 20 minutes since I had dropped off my son at pre-school. I started moving up the hill again, working muscles that I knew would stiffen in the cold driving rain. The heavy mud coating slowed me down and I pushed at it with my hands. The rain helped and soon most of it was off.

I looked down at myself, looked at the slicked tight nylon pants and shirt, realized I looked like I'd been mud wrestling. Feelings of survival and sex swirled and pulsed, and suddenly I was filled with need.

I pulled out my phone and called Lynnea...