Daily Excerpt: The Musings of a Carolina Yankee (Wally Amidon) - Alone in the Swamp
Excerpt from The Musings of a Carolina Yankee by Wally Amidon.
Alone in the Swamp
Have you ever had a day that you would like to forget but
that seems to come back at regular intervals in your life to haunt you? I had
such an adventure a few years back. I can laugh at it now, but at the time, it
really tried my spirit.
I have two sons, Mike and Steven, who, I think, sometimes
thought of themselves as Lewis and Clark because of the way they could navigate
the woods. One day, they thought it would be nice to take me to their newly
found hunting area. Now, things would have been different were I built more
like a Chuck Norris or Sylvester Stallone, but I am built more for comfort than
for physical exertion.
The boys came by the house at about 3:30 a.m. to pick me up
for the adventure. I should have known the day was going to be long when they
told me to hop into the back of the pickup as there wasn’t enough room for the
three of us in the front of the small truck they were driving. I loaded my
stout frame into the back of the truck, and off we zoomed in the wee hours of
the morning, headed to the great woods for a day of hunting for Bambi.
About an hour down the road, I felt something wet hit my
face. Darn! It was beginning to rain. I started banging on the rear sliding
window of the truck. One of the expedition leaders opened it and asked what I
needed. I told him I was getting wet, and he said he would tell his brother to
drive a little faster so the rain would fly over the windshield and hopefully
exit near the tailgate. It wasn’t working as the rain turned into a deluge. I
was thinking I was going to begin to float out over the side of the truck bed
if it came down any harder. I heard the truck begin to slow down a bit. My son,
who was driving, must have had pity on the old man in the back. I thought he
was going to kick his older brother out of the front and let little poor ol’ me
get into the front where the heater was surging like a blast furnace in the
steel mills of Pittsburgh. Wrong!!! He got out to tell me to wrap up in the
tarp that was in the toolbox I was trying to seek refuge under. I got the tarp
out and tried my best to make a cocoon out of it. I heard the truck begin to
accelerate as Steven began shifting through the gears to hurtle us through the
darkness of a wet South Carolina dawn.
All was going well under the tarp until I tried to turn over
to get my hip bone off some foreign object left in the bed of the truck.
Whatever it was, it felt like a harpoon slowly working itself into me, and the
bumpy road wasn’t helping much .As I turned to get onto my back, the
unthinkable happened. The wind caught the tarp and sent it flying free into the
night air. I was going to knock on the back window again when I reasoned with
myself that I would get a lot wetter if the truck stopped again and we had to
back up and search along the road for my temporary shelter. I figured we could
pick it up on the way back. I tried to crawl a little deeper under the toolbox
but to no avail as I am about the size of the toolbox, which was bolted down to
the truck bed. I pulled my collar up and tucked my head down into my coat,
feeling like a scared turtle.
Finally, I felt us slowing down and figured we were taking a
right turn as I slid across to the other side of the truck bed. I looked out of
my temporary coat shelter and saw that the rain had abated and the first rays
of the morning sun were trying to push their way through the grayness of the
overcast sky.
I felt us slow to a stop and heard Steven switch the truck
off as Mike jumped out of the passenger seat. “Where did the tarp go?” he asked
as I tried to raise myself up to a half-sitting position.
I said, “That’s another story, and we can get it on the way
home if it’s still there.”
“That’s okay,” Mike said. “It was full of holes, and I was
going to throw it away sometime this week.” Go figure, I thought to myself as
they opened the tailgate so I could make my agile exit.
I guess the boys knew the way down through the woods and
didn’t need Sacajawea to guide them. I was working hard, trying to keep up with
them. I guess their legs grew longer than mine sometime in their life when I
wasn’t watching.
All was going well until we came to the creek and, like the
Great Wallendas, they ambled across a fallen log, crossing like a couple of
squirrels scampering through the woods. I put one foot on the log and looked
down at the cold-looking creek, which was roaring and tearing along its course
because of the heavy rain, about 12 feet below me.
“C’mon,” the boys hollered simultaneously. “It’s getting
light, and we still have a ways to go.”
I didn’t want to lose the fearless image I had always tried
to present to them as they were growing up, so I told them, “My boots are a
little slippery, so I am going to sit down and scoot across the log so I don’t
fall into the creek.”
I could see by the looks on their faces that they knew I was
full of crap and wasn’t going to take a chance on a plunge into the
mini-Mississippi flowing below me. I sat on the log and began inching myself
across. I should have looked a little closer at the log as along the way, just
about the middle, I encountered green moss. Now, if you have ever felt green
moss after a rain, you know that it holds water better than a sponge. As I
tried to get across the moss, a wet, cold feeling began to sink in. That
feeling was not in my mind. It was coming through the seat of my pants. Each
pull across the moss probably squeezed an easy pint of water into my pants. I
guess at about five gallons, I got to the end of the log and reached the safety
of solid ground. My sons had possum looks on their faces as we trudged off. I’m
sure I heard one of them say, “Hope he brought along some extra Depends for the
rest of the day.”
We walked along, well, I should say, Mike and Steven walked
along as I huffed and puffed about 50 yards to the rear. They would stop now
and then to let me catch up, which I thought was nice, until I would finally
reach them and they would start walking again. I felt like the back part of a
Slinky, never being able to keep up with the front.
After what felt like a 40-year wandering in the wilderness,
we finally reached the place where the two explorers were going to drop me off
for the day. They told me they would be along right after dark to retrieve me.
Now, this was before the advent of cell phones. We had two-way radios, but they
just didn’t permeate the thickness of the forest where we were hunting.
They boys said that I would do well where they put me and to
fire three shots in the air if I had any problems and they would be right there
to help me. I watched them leave and saw them walking at a rather quick pace,
probably happy to have left the trailer behind them. I watched them as they
walked away and were slowly swallowed up by the thick vegetation.
The day passed without incident or sight of any deer. I did
hear something coming toward me, rustling the leaves as it walked along. I
readied my rifle and turned ever so slowly to see what I thought would be the
trophy buck of a lifetime, only to find a skunk walking my way and pawing
through the leaves, looking for insects. I kept a close eye on the polecat as
he drew near. I slowly edged myself around the back of the tree I was sitting
against, hoping to elude this hefty creature of fragrance. The skunk looked my
way once and kept moving, probably not wanting to mess with a fat guy wearing
wet britches.
The day slowly ebbed away, and darkness began to settle in.
I thought I had better ready myself for when the boys returned and reached into
my pack for my flashlight. I couldn’t feel it in my pack, and my heart began to
race a bit, thinking about sitting in the middle of a swamp waiting in the dark
for my two sons to come back and retrieve me.
The dark got darker, and I couldn’t see three feet in front
of me. I sat there with my back against a large yellow pine with my finger on
the safety of my rifle, just waiting for something to jump out at me so I could
let whatever it was have it. A crack of a limb behind me got my attention right
quick as the safety went off, and my finger tightened around the trigger. I was
letting myself feel like a little kid. It was actually fun for a few seconds at
a time scaring myself and then snapping back into reality, knowing that there
is nothing in the south Carolina woods that could hurt me—or was there?
I suddenly remembers tales of Lizard Man, who supposedly
lurked in the swamps of South Carolina. Now, that couldn’t be real, or could
it? I thought to myself. The South Carolina Lottery Commission even ran an
advertisement showing the creature in his swamp house, waiting for Powerball to
come on so he could check his numbers. Nonsense, I thought to myself.
Crack! Another limb snapped. Whatever was making the noise
was getting closer. I listened as I held my breath, hoping that whatever was
lurking out there in the dark wouldn’t hear my heavy breathing and the beating
of my heart, which felt like it was going to launch through my chest and head
into orbit. What are my kids going to say when they find my mangled corpse
under the tree? What are they going to tell their mother, or would they even
bother telling her? Now, that thought got me going, and my bravery returned
like that of a barfly who threatened to take on the world when he couldn’t
stand straight enough to do it without falling flat on his face.
“I’ll fix them if they don’t tell her or make up some kind
of story that I went down like a champion fighting rather than trying to bury
myself a little deeper into the forest floor,” I muttered to myself, being
careful to make sure I wasn’t loud enough for the monster in the woods to hear
me.
“Yea, though I walk,” I was saying when I realized I wasn’t
walking but pressed close to the ground, peering into the ink beyond. I wonder
if that prayer covers people who are trying to hide from murderous creatures, I
thought to myself.
I could hear whatever it was coming closer and closer. I
took my hunting knife from the sheath, held it in my right hand, and clutched
my rifle in my left hand. Whatever this demon was preying on me was going to
suffer agony from multiple stab and rifle wounds. Come on, big boy, I thought
to myself. My bravery level was even with my fear level now. I felt bi-polar.
Scared, then brave, then scared, then brave again. I was hoping for the best
and that the brave part would outlast the scared part—just a few seconds
longer.
Now, I could hear footsteps behind me. Darn! That stinking
monster had outflanked me and was coming in for the kill. Did I want to turn,
face my attacker like a man, and go out in a blaze of glory, or was I going to
cower, trembling like a babbling idiot, and be ripped to shreds without putting
up a fight? Thoughts of Davy Crockett at the Alamo, swinging Ol’ Betsy and
trying to take out as many as he could before he would be slain in a hopeless
battle fluttered through my tortured brain. The Davy Crockett song started
running through my mind as the steps in the dark drew closer to the place that
would be memorialized as my final stand.
I could hear all four feet shuffling through the leaves and
cracking little sticks on the ground as I readied myself for eternity. I peered
into the darkness, trying to see some type of outline or shape, but it was just
too dark. I felt my heart racing and thought to myself that these were the
final beats I would ever hear. My life was beginning to flash before me when a
light suddenly flashed into my face.
It was Michael and Steven. Hallelujah! God is still on the
throne! My kids have come to rescue their poor old dad. “Are you ready?” one of
the boys asked.
I replied, “Sure. Why didn’t you use your light when you
were walking through the woods so I could have seen you coming a lot sooner?”
My son replied, “Our batteries were dying, and we know our
way around these woods, anyhow. Why waste them? We will need the lights to get
you back across the log.” I had forgotten about my return Grand Canyon crossing
but was ready for anything after the ordeal I had just suffered.
“How come you had your knife out?” my eldest asked.
“Oh, I was just whittling while waiting for you guys to come
get me.” I don’t think they believed me as there were no shavings or sticks
nearby, but they didn’t say anything.
“Did you see anything today?” I asked as we walked through
the darkness.
“Nope” was the reply, “but we did hear something big running
through the woods when we got close to where you were sitting. Did you see
anything?”
“Nope,” I said as I hastened my pace and got into second
place in the line.
We finally made it back to the truck after what seemed to be
an eternity of walking. I got across the log all right and wasn’t caring much
about the mini-Colorado River raging below.
My mind had been on what I was leaving behind more than falling off the
log and into the thundering abyss below. I had escaped alive from the creature
lurking in the depths of the swamp. I was ready for the ride back home and to
let the jitters settle some.
I found my place in the back of the truck and cuddled myself
into the corner to keep the wind off me. My boys stopped to look for the tarp,
but it was gone. Somebody probably saw it and picked it up. We rattled long the
road for a few minutes, and I decided to roll over on my back. I had just
gotten into a comfortable position, pulled my pack up for a pillow, and closed
my eyes when the first drop of rain hit me on the side of my face.
Read more posts about Wally and his book HERE.
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