Today was a beau­ti­ful May in West­ern Wash­ing­ton: Sunny with a spot of clouds, a nice breeze, and not too hot. Eddy and I decided it was sim­ply an impos­si­ble day to spend indoors, so we decided to mean­der down to the Mont­lake area and explore the water­front in front of UW and then go to the Wash­ing­ton Park Arbore­tum to check out the mix­ture of nature and human free­ways intersecting.

For the most part, every­thing went well. We were get­ting good shots of the ghost ramps next to I-520, and got up close to some geese and their gosling. So when we encoun­tered a trail along the water­front that went back to cam­pus, it was decided to go on this path and only took a side­ways glance at the fol­low­ing sign, this would prove to be fateful:

The Ignored Sign. I decided it was most likely incor­rect, and they were prob­a­bly just kidding.

We con­tinue going along the path­way, and then came to a spot in the open water where most of the board­walk was sub­merged, so we had to walk through a few inches of water to cross. Slightly con­cern­ing, but a minor com­pli­ca­tion. We then started notic­ing that in many places they were using lay­ers of bark to pro­vide a some­what squishy pathway–an envi­ron­men­tally friendly choice to make a human path, but slightly dif­fi­cult to keep dry.

Then we went through this long stretch of almost the equiv­a­lent of quick­sand, except with mud. But still, this was con­quered with only minor mud­di­ness. Then we encoun­tered a sub­merged sec­tion of the path that did not have an easy solu­tion to cross for me. Eddy was wear­ing san­dals, and was able to kind of bal­ance his way on a sub­merged board that was still some­what buoy­ant. So he crossed suc­cess­fully. I how­ever, was wear­ing shoes and wasn’t too hot on the idea of going bare­foot in that swampy area.

The sit­u­a­tion.

I start to think about pos­si­ble ways to cross. I con­sid­ered ford­ing that cen­tral water area, using some sticks to kind of stilt my way through, or going all the way back through the other swampy area again.

Think­ing it Out

In the mean­time, Eddy is kind of try­ing to fig­ure out what I should do too.

Eddy lulz­ing

After some con­sid­er­a­tion, I decide that those grassy things to the right of me (left in the pic­ture) are prob­a­bly strong enough to hold my weight. Even though they’re in the deep water, they seem like they’re rooted in the ground or at least float well enough for me to cross the obstruction.

Set­ting Off

So far so good. They’re sup­port­ing me per­fectly and there doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Prob­lems

The next step is right onto a tree. And that tree doesn’t look like it could hold me at all, and try­ing to avoid step­ping in a big pile of water, I decided my next move.

Hmmm

There was another trail of grassy plants that is a larger loop, but it appeared that they would meet up at the end of the obstruc­tion and thus enable me to bypass the tree sit­u­a­tion. So I head on back and decide to take the alter­nate route. It seemed pretty safe. The water appeared to be deeper on this other loop, but the plants were hold­ing up fine on the inner loop.

The Detour

Then I start notic­ing that these plants were smaller. And kind of bob­bled when I stepped on them. And they were get­ting smaller and smaller. Until about two thirds of the way there some­thing failed or slipped and I stepped into a big sec­tion of water. The last thing I remem­ber think­ing was “this is kind of like island hop­ping in World War II!”

All hell then broke loose and the next thing I remem­ber is stand­ing in swamp water halfway up my chest while hold­ing my bag and cam­era above my head. Since I’ve been wan­der­ing around on and around the water a lot with my cam­era, I’ve trained myself to always throw my cam­era hand up when I’m falling, and that instinct worked per­fectly. The bag got some­what wet on the out­side, but luck­ily it was water­proof. Eddy was watch­ing the whole thing, and was talk­ing to a cou­ple who had come from the oppo­site side.

I then decided to ask Eddy to try and take my bag and cam­era so I could use my arms and try to extract myself from this slightly amus­ing mess.

The After­math

As you can see, I made it out. I’m pretty soaked and dirty. And slightly smelly. And very pleased with myself. Noth­ing impor­tant got wet.

We took the bus back up the U-District, where I blended in with the local population.