Katelyn Moore
Tales from the swamp, Part 5

Its quite difficult to come up with stories that really show the real side of how things are in the swamp when you’ve never been there… and since I’m sworn to secrecy when it comes to the exact location of said swamp, it appears that, really, none of you will get there. Which may or may not be a good thing. I suppose I could tell the general populace where the swamp is, but that takes the mystery out of it, doesn’t it? If I confirm or deny the guesses as to where my stories take place, it takes a little of the magic away. You won’t be able to create in your mind the place I describe, because there will be a photograph or a map in your head rather than your own design. So I guess keeping the actual location of my setting secret makes for a better reading experience.

Enough with the babble. I do have a story to tell, after all! Boating is a vital part of life in the swamp. If you don’t have a boat stuck somewhere, you definitely aren’t from around there, nor have you adopted the local customs. Whether it be a fishing boat, a pontoon-festooned monster, or a deck boat with a grill hanging off the side, almost everyone has a water vehicle of some kind. (I personally have witnessed a 10-foot ganoe—a canoe with a motor for the uninitiated—pulling an air mattress full of kids down the river. It doesn’t matter what you have, as long as it works.) The gathering place for this assortment of aquatic vessels is the sandbar, a huge protrusion of collected river silt and sand that lurks anywhere from three feet to two inches below the surface of the water. The larger boats anchor near the outside edges of the bar, while the smaller boats putter inward as far as their motors and draw will let them, anchoring and tying off to each other until there is a veritable spider web of mooring lines crisscrossing the sandbar from one end to the other.

The main form of entertainment on the sandbar is watching other boats run aground on it. I don’t know what kind of special you have to be to run aground when there are near about fifty people running around kneedeep in water, but it happens more often than you’d like to think. Sometimes the population of the sandbar will stop doing everything: footballs will stop flying between the teenagers, the covers on the grills will close, all splashing from the youngsters will cease, and everyone will just stand and stare as a boat runs up on the sandbar.

It helps the entertainment value that the boats are always those hideously expensive, completely unnecessary, more money than brains kind of contraptions that were just made for the rest of us to mock. When this happens, there is always a countdown involved. Someone will see a boat coming, headed straight for the sandbar and, after a few preliminary attempts to wave off the errant driver, a shout will go up among the patrons of the sandbar. Always starting at five, by the time the count gets to one, the entire sandbar seems to be chanting along as the boat hits the sandbar with a terrific lurch, spraying mud and water high into the air from the grounded motor. Cheers ensue and a delegation from the gathered boats wades over to make sure everyone is okay while the rest of the group toasts the errant driver and his wayward crew, holding drinks high in salute.

This whole process may sound quite cruel, but, really, we did warn them.--Katelyn Moore is a senior at Valdosta State University and a former intern at The Forest-Blade.

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