(1) If you think a swamp is the big time, then back swamp is a step down, a huge step down. Back swamp is somewhere you don't want to be, ever, never.
Captain John Smith, referring to Virginia way back when, first used the word "swamp" because the land there resembled a spongy fungus, or possibly a morass. (From Old Norse or Middle English or Middle Dutch or Middle Low German, one of them or all of them, probably with a heavy emphasis on "low", and "morass".) My ass, your ass, morass, and so on, all on the line, sucky and yucky. Grabbing at your feet if you get anywhere near.
Poor man, that Captain John Smith. He could have been the original Swamp Yankee if only he'd lived farther north. No such luck.
So anyway, compared to a swamp a back swamp is much, much less impressive, even with glitter sprinkled on it.
You may say that a back swamp is a marshy low area along a river, but not right next to it. No, not quite up on stage. Not up to it. Its name is never up there in lights, and its fame even less so.
It is way farther back, between, say, a natural levee and the upland, somewhere in there, reduced to lurking.
But in the way all things find a mediocre average, back swamps are those perennially goopy anonymous low areas in flood plains where fine silt and infinite kinds of muck accumulate and fester, often disguised by thickets of disreputable vegetation virtually twitching with pestilence, and buzzing with crawling things, each of which is waiting for you to come within reach of its biting parts, or its poking stinger, which it probably has too. They all seem to have at least one. And maybe suckers — you never know. Definitely sucking parts though.
(2) If a backwater is a slow, sludgy, slimy, stagnant, infested hole, then imagine what a back swamp must be like. If you dare, that is.
Back Swamps are sagging, soft, squishy, oozing areas around flood plains where deposits of fine silt and clay drift in and settle after the floods that carried them along have sickened and died.
There they stay, muttering to themselves, unshaven, unbuttoned, wearing dirty underpants and going for weeks (possibly months — maybe even years) without a proper bath, eating out of cans, drinking out of bottles, and scanning the horizon unsteadily with bleary, bloodshot eyes, waiting for something to happen.
And then you come by one day, traipsing along merrily in your fine squeaky new boots, festively colored pack, with smiley faces all over your shirt.
Well folks, some people would call this entertainment. Not the hiking. Not the new clothes or the way you are wearing them, no. No. It's the what. What happens to you when you get too close to the back swamp and find out what the opposite of Have a nice day! really is. What it really is.
Which is Mighty Fine Entertainment. Yes indeed. For many, but of course not for you. You get something else.
Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@gmail.com
Me? Going to clean house right exactly now and hire some security.
Etc...
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definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
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