To continue...
There is a unique smell to the marsh here - you can usually be most aware of it at low tide when the pluff mud is exposed - there are bacteria in the mud that mildly sulfury odor that mixed with salt air, salty water and all the other nature around you is actually really pleasant.
This was not that smell. It smelled like death to me, and it smelled like sour, wet burlap and it smelled like breath.
I sat like a stone wondering if there was a gator hole that I was close too, but I was on high ground, and gators will not winter too far from fresh water. I saw no brush move, or branches sway, but I was aware that that smell was getting stronger, and at that point I realized that even the hair on my legs was standing out.
I was terrified like I had never been in my life. I recall wanting to scream, but cound not make a noise from my mouth, and I recall wanting to run, but I was too afraid to run. The most vivid recollection I have of those moments are of the absolute silence that hung in the air like a blanket, and of that smell, and of the intense feeling of being watched.
At some point, I did remember that there was a boat not too far from me that I had the key to, and I convinced my legs to move, and move they did - like a gold metal sprinter.
There is still a large ding in the fiberglass floor of my boat where I threw the anchor in. I got the hell out of there, and I have never been back, and I will never go back.
I don't know what I met up with that day, as I never saw it, but I am convinced that if I remaind there, I would have come to a bad end.
I joined the forum to show you guys about my pond plans, and hopefully I'll get to that soon, but when I'm on my land which is away from the coast in part of the ACE Basin, I am never unarmed when I am in the woods.
