Swamp Stompin’ With Honey Badger: Part 6

When I took the stupid direction at the sketchy fork off the trail that felt like it went through Namibia… things got weird. The grasses and reeds in the sketchy landbound estuary morass I’d ridden through were tall but once I’d gained some elevation they had dry soil for their roots and they got aggressive.

I was riding more or less straight, which is good because I couldn’t see where the front tire was making contact with the ground. Then I couldn’t see the front tire. No worries for the little motorcycle, just roll slowly and hope you don’t hit a badger hole… or a boa constrictor that somehow teleported to the wrong latitude. I’m starting to appreciate winter! The place I went would be a killing zone if winter didn’t eliminate most living things.

I had hope it would all turn out well because someone had driven that way before me. Something with very high clearance that squished the grass but didn’t kill it. A tractor?

I was very happy to see the tracks. I wasn’t ridiculously far out but from a practical standpoint I might as well be on Mars. This was exactly the point where “this is fun” turns into “I shouldn’t be here”.

But the tracks were true and eventually I found a hay field out there. Someone had baled it. Human existence. A good sign.

The bad sign was that the tractor had baled the field and drove back out the way it came. I kept rolling along and now the grass was unblemished. Yikes.

I caught the tiniest hint that maybe an ATV had been there once. Meh, that’s enough to keep going.

By my reckoning I was following a survey line that had the ubiquitous “access trail” on the boundary and the access trail was more theoretical than actual. One side was Federal, the other side was the farmer’s land that wasn’t good enough to be a hay field, on every side the ticks brushed from the grass and crawled on my jacket.

I expected to find a turn in the boundary. A 90 degree deviation. Make the turn and you’re heading back toward pavement. Miss the turn and you’ve become an idiot bushwacking though a swamp following the idea of a compass bearing as envisioned by a surveyor in an office in the 1900’s.

Damn. I must have missed it. I stopped. I tried to put the kickstand down and it was so tangled in grass that it didn’t fully extend. I almost dropped the bike! I had to stay on the bike because I didn’t feel like messing with the ground enough to make a clear spot for the kickstand. But still, I didn’t think I was actually “lost”. I’d been watching, if there was a boundary line it must have been the faintest of traces.

Honey Badger said “relax, we got this”. I rolled ahead. I promised myself I’d turn around if I went another 200 yards without finding the turn. Not 20 yards later I found it. It was so obvious that an airplane could see it… but not me. Down there in the mess it was completely invisible until I was right on top of it.

I took the turn and things mellowed out quickly. Within a few hundred yards there were tracks again. Then someone had done a crude half assed job with a brush hog. I stopped to brush off ticks. Heaven! A quarter mile later I passed a remote off grid cabin. More tracks. A couple miles later I was on pavement.

A lesson in life. I’d been so mired in grass that the kickstand wouldn’t go down but I was simultaneously very close to the route out. It had been a perfect little detour.

Also, a great test of my equipment. Everything but my GoPro had worked flawlessly and who needs photos? Spoken too soon!

When I met Odin and his side chick a few miles later I didn’t get a photo!

(To be continued.)