Waldo Redux

I was watching Myth Busters on the discovery channel and was reminded of another Waldo story (The Myth Busters were trying to make quicksand). When we ran rivers we frequently played in the fine grained sediments on the banks of the river with the intent of making a sort of quicksand. We would find an area near the river that looked potentially muddy and would start walking around the area making a very thick, very sandy mud. Then we would goof around in it trying to see how far we could make ourselves sink into the mud. Actually one time when we were on the Delores River in Colorado we worked the mud so hard that it became a liquid. In this case we decided to hold mud swimming races.

Anyway, on the same trip that Waldo did the cliff stunt we had stopped at a nice beach for the night. And sure enough there was a suitable area for mudding. After preparing the campsite those who had no chores that night started to work the mud (though I don’t remember for sure I think I was on kitchen duty that night as I do not remember playing in the mud). Some of the guys were having a wonderful time goofing around in the mud. Then the dinner bell rang (ok dinner shout). Everybody came to get in line except Waldo; he was still trying to dig himself in. What nobody noticed was that the river level was dropping. As it dropped the water in the mud also lowered. As we were eating supper Waldo shouted that he couldn’t get out. We went over to see what was wrong and sure enough he was encased in hard dirt almost up to his chest. It took the guys about two hours to dig him out. His reward was to clean all the iron cooking pots.