Velociworld

DRAINING THE SWAMP

Have you ever seen an ancient body of water drained? Swamp, lake, pond? One doesn't see too much of that anymore, as nowadays they are termed wetlands, and the very idea of draining these lowlands to erect housing communities or strip malls is considered blasphemous.

And I agree with that sentiment, truth be told. Go build your subdivision on the sandhills. Kill off the gopher tortoise habitat, not this magnificent fishing hole. I likes me a nice piece of boggy swamp, full of bass and bream and perch and sunbellies and cottonmouth moccasins and allimagators.

The percolating abdomen of a drained swamp is the point here, however. Dismaying, it is. Even the most primordial, primeval of swamp reveals, in its enforced nudity, a most foul exposition. Dead fish, beer cans, otter skeletons, ensnarled fishing line, rubber boots, trash, garbage, stump, algae, all civilization's and nature's foul detritus. What was beautiful and pristine masked a nasty underbelly of corruption.

I hear the call of the marshland, lately, and feel the need to drain my swamp. It's a cyclical thing I indulge in every five years or so. Indulge being perhaps too kind a word. I drain the swamp of my soul, and cast my eye upon the psychic fish hooks, hydrilla, and oil cans that have inhabited my world for a while. Clean house. The cypress stump be grinded, the rotted fish are incinerated, the garbage taken out.

Two weeks? Maybe more. No timeline on this, just get 'er done before the rainy season refills the swamp.