Ankle deep in black water

So I probably laughed for a good minute straight at the sight of my friend trying to paddle in the canoe. It’s not that he looked ridiculous or anything, well, I take that back…but the ridiculousness was much less attributed to him and the canoe, and more to the place in which the canoe currently was. Even then, it wasn’t so much the location that was ridiculous, but what the location appeared to be from where I was standing– barefoot and dripping, on top of a gigantic rusted tank somewhere in the middle of an enormous golden marsh. We had taken a small detour off of the main river, down a very narrow tributary of sorts, which ran straight into the middle of nowhere, into an endless labyrinth of small streams and lily-padded water avenues. The water was very shallow, only a foot deep perhaps, but the sooty mud that coated the marsh floor was as dense as pudding, and one could stick their paddle into it all the way to the handle– needless to say, not a place to go swimming. In between the small winding avenues of river run-off was a vast sea of short blond grass, which rooted just beneath the surface, and grew upwards to mask the water beneath it completely. After a few dead ends, we found one which seemed to run in an interesting direction, and committed ourselves to taking it, despite the fact that it slowly got smaller, and smaller, until at last we were trying to canoe down a narrow trench of water no wider than my fist. It was here that we noticed a giant rusty thing sticking out of the swamp some yards away, and it was here that I decided to take my shoes off, grab one of the beers we brought along, and try to walk out to it. The grass gave way easily beneath my foot, and black water surrounded my ankle with every step…but something about it seemed clean, and unworrisome. I made it to what turned out to be a large dual-tank of some kind, perhaps for a pontoon boat, and climbed aboard…cracking open the beer, and turning to look at my friend– at which point the laughter immediately began. You see, from on top of the tank, the tiny narrow ditch of water that we had been canoeing down had completely disappeared… in fact, the closest water I could see was a very long distance away, and it appeared that I was simply standing in an endless grass field. The sun was starting to fall low, but was still extremely bright…and the stillness that comes from venturing into the wild so far off the standard grid of travel was delightful. Not a trace of humanity for miles, save the rusted hulk under my wet feet…and, of course, my friend, who was struggling in the canoe. A canoe, I might add, that looked like it was just sitting in the grass, in the middle of nowhere, while it’s occupant tried to paddle it up and down to no avail.