Sinking Sand

Jordan River, Galilee, Israel

I took one more step and my foot sank even deeper. Great. I’m thigh deep in mud with nothing grab onto and no one in sight. I’m going to die.

I had been looking forward to laying eyes my namesake, the Jordan River. It’s probably one of the most well known rivers in the world and for good reason; and I was looking forward to going home and telling everybody that I’d gotten to splash around in such a famous body of water. But my first experience with the river was a little less than pleasant.

I was just as excited as anybody else when the thirty of us piled out of the bus and made a beeline for the river clad in bathing suits and armed with inner tubes. The first sight of the river was a bit underwhelming, however; the “river” was about a foot of fast moving water over some good-sized rocks because it hadn’t rained all summer. But nevertheless, we all jumped in.

Half an hour later, after a few crashes and falling headfirst down a small waterfall, the river became too shallow to even sit on the inner tube at some points; then, I would have to get up and walk downriver until it was deep enough to float. It was one of these walking intermissions that I spied some sand on the bank to my right and decided to walk along the bank until I found deeper waters.

A few feet from the bank, I stepped in something squishy and my left foot sank into mud below the surface of the water. Before I could stop myself, I had gotten both feet trapped in the mud. I tried to make for lunge for the bank but the more I struggled the deeper I sank. Now I’m thigh-deep in mud with nowhere to go and no one in sight. I had started out in the rear of the group and most of them were now a lot farther down river than I was. No one was coming to help me.

My first move was to stop moving. If this was quicksand, my action-movie knowledge told me that I would keep sinking no matter what I did. I stopped—I wasn’t actively sinking. Okay, it’s a start. Now I needed to get out of the mud. I pumped my legs back and forth, almost losing my shoes in the mud in the process; but five minutes later I was victoriously kneeling in the surface of the deadly mud pit.

Now what? I didn’t want to stand up on my feet for fear of sinking again—but I couldn’t stay there; I needed to get out of the water. Queue all the stereotypical split-second thoughts of a near-death experience—worst-case scenarios, life flashing before my eyes—all of it. As I knelt there trying to stay calm and figure out what to do, I heard splashing behind me. I turned around and saw the most welcoming sight I’ve ever seen in my life—legs crossed, shades on, nonchalantly paddling downriver with a long piece of bamboo was my good friend Sam Hebert.

Good-guy Sam paddled over as I screamed for help and pulled my out of my predicament with his bamboo stick. Covered in mud and clutching my tube, I wanted nothing more than to get out of this muddy deathtrap. After zigzagging downriver for another hour, we finally finished our little rafting adventure and set foot back on solid ground again.

I almost died six inches of water (and three feet of mud) on the Jordan River. Whether I was actually close to death or not, I don’t know; but I do know that it was terrifying, it was very memorable, and it was incredibly ironic. We experienced the river a couple more times after this particular trip, and those were more enjoyable and less life threatening. Now when I hear the words of the hymn that says “all other ground is sinking sand”, I understand exactly what they’re talking about.