Week 8: Down In the Boondocks....

The sound of softly crunching pine needles acompanies my foot steps as I make my way along the damp forest path. It's a small back woods trail; one that runs just beyound the treeline that gaurds our back lawn and the moss covered swamp that lays beyound. My jeans are already stained and my once light blue shirt had a dark ring around the mid section, a result of haveing scalled a tree or two in an attempt to see just how wide my objective is; that objective being the large body of standing water dead center of the swamp I'd entilted 'Tiger Lake.' It sat shrouded by a toumble of half rotted trees and encrouching moss that fought against the acidity of the pine bed left by the furs and pine that make up the majority of the wood in this area.

I duck around a withered tree and lay eyes on the black depths of Tiger Lake, it's surface only disturbed by the buzzing of impossibly numerous inscts, the segmented legs of water skimmers, mosquitoes, and other assorted larva hum on or just above the water. With slow, almost hesitant steps I aporache and begin what I like to call the 'psych up'. It's a little process where I intentionally try to get my adrenaline pounding, like playing a kick ass song in my head over and over or genearlly try to generate at 'fight' response to get my nerve up.

After all a bunch of people said there were a tong of leeches in that water.

None of my friends that had come out to visit this spot had dared to swim in the Lake, let along put their feet into the water. Now, I was about to show them that there was nothing to worry about, that the whole thing with leeches and other creepy crawlies wasn't a big deal. Still, I thought as I started to walk into the water with my shoes and sneakers still on, best to keep covered up just in case there are a few nasties in there that might bite....