It was due to our complete lack of research as kids, that we fully believed quicksand to be a real and ominous danger to our everyday lives. Well, we were also gullible, along with being poorly researched. Although we only watched about 4 hours of TV in a week, I would still suggest that we soaked in far too much for our own good. Looking back, it is plain to see how much shows like Gilligan’s Island and Bewitched skewed our expectations of the world. I THINK kids are smarter these days, but I can’t be sure.
In our youth, we assumed that one could actually be sucked into a previously undetected pit of quicksand and that would be the end of them. We were also led to believe that the guy wearing a hat would be most likely to bite it, as evidenced so often on the small screen, a chapeau was all that was left to mark the ominous spot where someone had been pulled under. It was blatant.
There are plenty of flaws in this whole quicksand theory, of course, and the hat issue is the least of the worries.
The one saving grace we had back then was that literally none of the television shows that we were subjected to were filmed in our area or even featured Canada in any way shape or form (other than The Beachcombers and we were MILES from Molly’s Reach!), leaving us/me to assume that quicksand was only one of those things that happened in the far away places frequented by adventurers, rather than people by people living East-of-Adelaide Street like us/me. Therefore, until we grew up and became actual explorers, we were fairly safe from from the clutches of quicksand. As well as from erupting volcanos, angry wildebeests, and also dying of thirst in the desert, for that matter. From what I’ve heard, EoA is rougher these days but there’s still not a single wildebeest in sight.
The startling fact is that quicksand can happen wherever there is a quantity of sand, silt, or clay, and a good deal of water. That includes beach situations, marshes, riverbanks, creeks, and keep an eye on any place with an underground spring. Usually, it is the washing in and out of the tide that adds a great deal of water to an area–an area which might well be strong on its own when dry but since great quantities of water can push the grains of sand/silt/clay further apart, the foundation’s overall stability can be suddenly weakened. We can see this play out whenever we stand for any length of time at the water’s edge of a sandy beach while the waves gently go about their business of covering one’s feet with sand.
With an upswelling of water from below ground, the same action of pushing around sand/silt/clay grains can take place. Even a mild earthquake can lessen an area’s former stability if there is water nearby (and somehow it always seems that there is, doesn’t it?).
Quicksand can be formed in either saltwater or freshwater locations. It had been thought that it was a saltwater-only thing, but science blew in and after some tedious testing, presented us with the conclusion that quicksand can happen anywhere.
We have several places here in Canada that are honest-to-goodness quicksand areas. The Ottawa Valley for instance, sits on the clay deposits leftover from a shallow in-land sea from 15,000 years ago. Once the sea dried up, the clay remained and even to this day continues to be a bother to local gardeners trying to cultivate asparagus or carrots. Along some of the remaining bodies of water in that area are spots known to become quicksand if enough water gets added suddenly.
Amazingly, quicksand is so common in some locations on the East Coast, southern Ontario, and on the West Coast, that officials have actually had to post signs to warn of the most notorious spots. The stuff can also be found in the Banff/ Lake Louise area, if you can imagine that.
Take away: Nowhere is safe! (AND, we were actually right all along!)
In an attempt to swing this towards being a Good News Story, my investigations showed that it is pretty much impossible to be sucked completely under the surface if you get stuck in quicksand. True! Job #1 is to not panic. That is very easy to preach from the safety of my cozy little den on the second floor but let me remind you that panic can lead to struggling and struggling only serves to sink a person deeper.
Since the consistency of quicksand is twice the density of the human body, those same scientists from a few paragraphs ago, concluded that one is likely to only sink up to the knees or to the waist at the very most (unless you are flapping around in a panic and working yourself in deeper, by mistake). If you find yourself imbedded thusly in quicksand, they recommend that you lay back onto to the quicksand (you’ll need a shower once you get home anyway so don’t worry about getting sand in your hair) and to SLOWLY move your legs back and forth to allow water to fill in the vacuumed space that dropping into really super wet sand makes. That sort of motion will eventually introduce enough water to ‘float’ your legs to the top, or at least to a place that you can free your legs (although there’s a good chance that you’ll have to kiss your new boots good-bye). Then, just stay horizontal and roll yourself right on outta there so that you don’t get stuck again by standing up in the same spot and duplicating your previous feat.
That sounds easy, doesn’t it?
And once you’ve successfully freed yourself, don’t forget to pick up your hat and take it with you so that the next group of hikers won’t freak out and think that you got sucked under.
