The channel ran deep into the swamp, so I swam down it as long as I could. When I was too exhausted to swim any further I pulled myself out of the water onto a game trail. I didn't know for sure what sort of animal made the trail, but given it's size I didn't want to meet the thing. Covering my tracks so they couldn't be seen from the water was difficult and time consuming, but a necessary investment. At this point they didn't have a trail to follow and it was critical I didn't give them a fresh one. It would be impossible to eliminate all signs of my passing, especially in the thick mud, but I had to eliminate tracks at places they were likely to see. Sherriff's Deputies would soon be searching by boat. If they noticed were I left the water they could refocus their search to that point, which would be a disaster since anyone could follow my trail in the mud.

The game trail I crawled down was black mud. The soil of the swamp. The mud itself was thick and gooey. It had the consistency of peanut butter. It was deep enough to swallow me whole were I to stand and focus my weight. The first thing I did after leaving the water was to cover my body with the mud. Not for camouflage, which it was good for, but for the limited protection it offered from the persistent mosquitoes. With my head slightly above the saw grass I could see the tree tops on both sides of the swamp, giving an indication of my location. I had crossed a quarter of the distance to the opposite woods. Originally I had thought to cross to the other side but changed my mind after experience with the swamp. One reason was dehydration. I would have called this a saltwater swamp as its waterways connected to the ocean at some point because it was subject to tidal influence. Closer to the ocean the water would have a high enough salinity to support sharks, crabs, and other saltwater inhabitants. However, this swamp was so far from the ocean that the water had a weak salinity and far fewer ocean inhabitants. It was possible to see a shark here, but not likely. Here I was more likely to run into alligators and fresh water snakes. I feared the trail I followed belonged to a gator, which I tried not to think about. Snake were a likely problem as I had already spotted their sign. Also a troublesome thought as I lacked anything to push a snake away, not even shoes. But so far the only predator that had troubled me were mosquitoes. It turned out they would be the most dangerous critter in the swamp.

In the few hours of daylight that remained I heard numerous small boats moving slowly through the water. Occasionally I heard dogs in those boats, but I doubt my scent was detectable from the rank smell of decay that permeated the swamp. I doubted anyone would get out of the boats to search in the mud and saw grass. If they did the swamp was so vast that the odds of finding me were thin. With this in mind I decided to lay still, wait and rest. Wait for dark when anyone with half a brain would leave the swamp and go home.

Not long after I made this decision I heard a helicopter. Just one, but it was a good one. A helicopter with a crew well trained in finding needles in a haystack. I knew because I'd had the same training. A Coast Guard search and rescue helicopter. Only they weren't going to rescue me, they were going to get me killed. I wondered how they legally justified searching for me. In boot camp we were told the Coast Guard wasn't allowed to assist civilian authorities in criminal matters. The authorities must have told the Coast Guard they tracked me to the water then lost my trail. The Coast Guard had been called in under the pretense that I needed rescue because I was in the water.

I still loved the SAR mission of the Coast Guard, so it was with a deal of unit pride that I watched the helicopter fly a tight grid pattern. In a few more passes they'd be directly over me. If I had trees or bushes for cover I would move to a spot in the grid they'd already searched, but there was no cover and I couldn't move fast enough in the mud so I had no choice but to lay still and hope the mud camouflage would hide me. When the helicopter approached on a course to fly directly over I closed my eyes. I'd already coated my eyelids with mud, so the only white remaining were my eyes. Another reason I closed my eyes was something Bob Schrader taught me back in seventh grade. Most people can feel when they're being watched. I didn't want to draw the spotter's attention with some sixth sense he didn't understand.

The sound of the big helicopter directly over head was overpowering. Worse than the sound was that the wind from its rotors caused the mud on my body to dry. It hung directly over me too long so I risked opening one eye. The helicopter was directly over me, about two hundred feet above the ground. So close I could see the face of the Coast Guardsman leaning against his strap half out of the open side door. The helicopter had indeed stopped moving forward and the spotter looked directly at me. The wind dried my eye to the point of pain so I closed it and opened the other. When I did the spotter shook his head, said something into his microphone and the helicopter moved forward. He had to have seen me. I laid there thinking they believed they'd located my dead body, so had held position long enough for a Sherriff's patrol boat to reach the spot. My best chance to live through my capture was to lay still. If they thought I was dead maybe they wouldn't shoot me. But they never came. The helicopter continued it's grid search and as night began to fall it returned to its base, leaving the swamp quiet again and me wondering what had happened.

I'd had to deal with mosquitoes all day. I wasn't surprised to find thick swarms of mosquitoes in a south Georgia swamp. I'd grown up not too far from here so had experienced them first hand. On this day I learned that the volume of mosquitoes you found near a swamp was a mere sampling of the numbers in the swamp itself. Where people lived on dry land mosquitoes were the invaders. But the swamp was the mosquito's home so I was the invader. I doubt they saw much soft warm flesh out here, so I was a rare treat. A treat they seemed determined to share with every insect in the know universe. By the time the sun began to set I thought I'd become numb from the little demon bites. I was wrong. All day I'd been attacked by scouts from the main mosquito army. When the sun set the war against my flesh and my sanity began in earnest. A full division of mosquito special forces fell on me. It was then that I learned what the words pain and misery really meant.

I had burrowed myself deep into the mud in futile attempt to hide from the attacking force of bugs. It didn't matter what I did, I couldn't hide from them. The mud was so think that I didn't think it possible they could reach me, but somehow they did. I still don't understand how. All I know is that they tortured me so bad that I had to move. It was too early to leave the swamp but I had no choice. If I stayed in the swamp any longer I would either die from the millions of bites I had received or loose my mind. Likely both.
I've always had a thing about not backtracking, so rather than going back to the channel I had come from I pushed forward on the game trail looking for the next one. As I crawled the mud game trail in the dark I again thought that this was likely a path used by an alligator, a nocturnal hunter. The mosquitos had tortured me so bad that I wasn't worried about an alligator. Even if I crawled into one's den, at least it was something solid I could fight. But I didn't encounter and alligator. There were numerous snakes in the night. Snakes that slithered across my hand and legs. One snake I startled by putting my hand down on him as I pulled myself forward in the dark. I couldn't see at all, but the one I put my hand on was big and heavy. The instant I touched it I felt the snake move aggressively, so I tightened my grip and threw it as far as I could. That one was nasty, but I snatched it up too fast for it to strike me.

Eventually I found another water channel. It was pitch black and about the scariest looking body of water I had ever seen. I knew it was no more dangerous in the dark than in daylight, but it still took me a few minutes to get my courage up enough to slide in. The mosquitoes decided the matter. Their attack slowed a little while I was moving, but now that I'd stopped they hit in force. I'd rather die by whatever hid in the dark waters than to be eaten by a million small bits. The water was still warm, but somewhat soothing. My thirst was painful so I tried a sip of the black liquid and dry heaved as a result. There was a taste of salt in the water, but not too much that I couldn't drink it. What made me throw up was the taste of decay and waste. It was the most disgusting thing I have every attempted to digest. After hours of swimming down the channel I spotted the tops of trees nearby. Not trusting that the channel would pass near land as had the original channel, I pulled myself out of the water and crawled across mud and saw grass.

Reaching dry land and trees was a relief. It was also a concern. There were lots of things that worried me in the swamp, but in the woods I had to worry about men with guns. I doubted they would want me bad enough to leave men in the woods through the night, but I hadn't thought they'd use a Coast Guard helicopter either. With this in mind I moved through the woods cautious and quiet. It wasn't long before I cut across a shallow creek. There wasn't enough water to drink so I used my hands to dig out a depression that soon filled with enough to drink. The water was warm, but tasted fine. Sticking my face into the small bowl I'd dug I drank it dry, waited a minute for it to refill and emptied it again. I repeated this process until my stomach hurt, but at least I had rehydrated my body after a hot, and exhausting day.

I couldn't see the moon or stars through the canopy of trees, so I had no sure way to navigate. But I had watched the sun set on the opposite side of the swamp, so I knew I stood on the eastern shore of the swamp. If I traveled with the swamp to my right I would be going south. From my memory of the area south held swamps and a wide river, so I kept the border of the swamp to my left and went north. If they did keep a watch in the woods it would be on the border of the swamp, so rather than travel on its edge I went deeper into the woods and used my internal compass to hold a route north. Sometime later I smelled cigarette smoke so I sat down and listened to the woods. Eventually I heard soft sounds and was able to identify their direction. Moving slow and silent I moved towards the sound. What I found were two men in some form of law enforcement uniform standing in the woods bordering on the swamp. Both smoked but were careful to cup their cigarettes to prevent the glow from being seen. They were looking out into the swamp. After one finished his cigarette he lifted a pair of binoculars and scanned the swamp. I'd seen enough. To my disappointment they were still out looking for me, but to my benefit they were still looking in the swamp. They would try to hold me there until daylight when they would search it again. Had it not been for the mosquitoes I would have stayed out there over night and likely been caught in their trap.

As I moved away from the two cops I was thinking about them and not paying attention to my woodcraft. Walking barefoot through the woods at night is hard on the feet, but when stealth is required barefoot works best. Barefoot I can feel everything below my foot, and by necessity I was careful where I placed my foot. But for a second my thoughts were elsewhere and I put my foot down on a dry stick. I should have felt it and pulled away before shifting my weight, but I didn't and was rewarded with a loud crack of dry wood. It was the kind of sound that could only be made by the weight of something heavy, like a man or bear. But there were no bears in these woods. For half a second I hoped the cops didn't know the woods well enough to know the sound or that they hadn't heard it. The sound they made in response to mine was that of a round being loaded into lever action rifle. For me that was the sound of a foot race being announced. I took off as fast as I could with rifle rounds chasing my sound in the dark.