Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [15]
It was a feeling that I could be a little different from everyone else of my age, and that, if pushed, I could battle against the forces of nature, and prevail. Adventure felt the most natural thing in the world, and it was where I came alive. It is what made me feel, for the first time, really myself.
As I got older and the rest of my world got more complicated and unnatural, I sought more and more the identity and wholeness that adventure gave me.
In short, when I was wet, muddy and cold, I felt a million dollars, and when I was with the lads, with everyone desperately trying to be ‘cool’, I felt more awkward and unsure of myself. I could do mud, but trying to be cool was never a success.
So I learnt to love the former, and shy away from the latter.
(Although I gave ‘cool’ a brief, good go as a young teenager, buying winkle-picker boots and listening to heavy metal records all through one long winter, both of which were wholly unsatisfying, and subsequently dropped as ‘boring’.)
Instead, I would often dress up in my ‘worst’ (aka my best) and dirtiest clothes, stand under the hosepipe in the garden, get soaking wet – in December – and then go off for a run on my own in the hills.
The locals thought me a bit bonkers, but my dog loved it, and I loved it. It felt wild, and it was a feeling that captured me more and more.
Once, I returned from one such run, caked in mud, and ran past a girl I quite fancied. I wondered if she might like the muddy look. It was, at least, original, I thought. Instead, she crossed the road very quickly, looking at me as if I was just weird.
It took me a while to begin to learn that girls don’t always like people who are totally scruffy and covered in mud. And what I considered natural, raw and wild didn’t necessarily equal sexy.
Lesson still in progress.
CHAPTER 13
On one occasion, probably aged about eleven, I remember being dared by a local friend of mine from the Isle of Wight to attempt, with him, a crossing of the harbour at low tide.
I knew the reputation of the harbour, and I felt in my bones that it was a bad idea to attempt to beat the mud and sludge.
But it also sounded quite fun.
Now, to cross the harbour at low tide would be no mean feat, as the mud was the worst thick, deep, oozy, limb-sucking variety … and in short, it was a damned stupid plan, flawed from the start.
Within ten yards of the shore I knew it was a bad idea, but foolishly, I just kept going. Sure enough, by the time we were about a third of the way out, we were stuck, and I mean really stuck.
I was up to my chest in black, stinking, clay, slime and mud.
We had used up so much energy in the short distance we had travelled that we were soon utterly beat, utterly stationary, and in utterly big trouble.
Each time we tried to move we got dragged down further, and I felt that awful sense of panic you get when you realize that you are into something beyond your control.
By the grace of God two things then happened. First of all, I found out, by experiment, that if I tried to ‘swim’ on the surface of this mud and not to fight it, then I could make very slow progress. Well, at least, progress of sorts. So, slowly we both turned around and literally clawed our way back towards the shore, inch by inch.
The second thing that happened was that someone on the shore spotted us and called the lifeboat. Now I knew we were in trouble – whether we made it out or not.
By the time the lifeboat had arrived on the scene we had made it ashore, both looking like monsters from the deep, and we had scarpered.
My mother inevitably heard about what had happened, as well as the part about the lifeboat being launched to rescue us. I was made, rightly, to go round to the coxswain of the lifeboat’s house and apologize in person, as well as offer myself to do chores for the crew in penance.
It was a good lesson: know your limits, don’t embark on any adventures without a solid back-up plan, and don’t be egged on by others when your instincts tell you something is a bad idea.
Apart from the odd