I recently learned that the term ‘I am so bogged down’ has a meaning other than being overworked and accomplishing nothing. I darned well learned where the saying came from and now I understand it.

Newfoundland abounds with pickup trucks, snow machines boats, and four wheelers, often referred to as ‘quads’ or ‘bog bikes’ depending on where you live.

Coming back to Newfoundland in 2000 to retire required that we learn the skills of using these machines and acquire one of each if we were to have the ability to enjoy the outdoors. We did just that.

Recently my spouse of many moons, Himself, had a synapse of the brain that made him decide he was driving into the country where he is starting to build a cabin. It was a hot day, no breeze, the sea looked like satin, but he was unwavering in his quest to drive the quad into the country, while our little boat sat waiting for us at the wharf. He asked if I wanted to go along and I agreed. I must have had a moment of temporary insanity to agree but off we went, loaded up with all the necessities for a day at a work site.

In order to get to the work site we had to drive through the water around the edge of a pond. Right off the bat, wet feet!! He had rubber boots, but I had sneakers with my $9.99 precious boots on the back of the quad. After these feet of mine were wet, he stopped and said it would be a good time to put on rubber boots. A reverse procedure I thought when the feet were already soaking wet!

Then we came to ‘THE BOG’! It was a huge bog with one quad trail, purposefully done so as not to tear up the terrain with ruts everywhere. As Guru Martha Stewart would say under her strands of bottle blond hair "And that’s a GOOD THING!"

The trail the bikes follow was supposed to be dry because we had so little rain. It was a beautiful serene looking place as bogs go. It was absolutely covered with hundreds of our Newfoundland Pitcher Plants and tiny ponds with glorious water lilies enjoying the sun. We drove slowly and took it all in, the quiet, the colors, the Pitcher Plants, while keeping watch for moose. All seemed well with the world!

Then down she went! The slickest thing you ever a saw-a ‘bog bike’ being swallowed by a bog!

"OK, you get off and we’ll get it out!" Himself says.

I stepped off the bike and immediately had that sinking feeling. The earth was swallowing me up as well. Down I went, further and further, and the memory of the childhood days when we would stick our ubiquitous long bamboo fishing rods into the mud on a bog and never feel bottom came to mind. I saw my life flash before my eyes. Or maybe I should say an eye, because by then my glasses had a huge blob of mud stuck to one lens and that was understandable seeing as how I was covered with mud all up to the back of my neck where the ‘stouts’, black flies and mosquitoes were having lunch.

No doubt about it, I was bogged down! I had a handgrip on the fender of that bike as good as any Sumo wrestler and attempted to pull myself up while Himself got his hand down in the mud and grabbed the tops of my boots! But I was still sinking. Finally, after moaning and groaning, getting devoured with flying creatures I could not identify, I could feel my feet coming out of the boots.

Those boots were my very favorite boots! They cost me $9.99 last year. So I yelled for Himself to really pull, because if the boots weren’t coming out, neither was I!! We tugged and pulled, I yelled and bellowed, the insects increased in number and size, and then I felt myself being lifted up, my $9.99 boots and all!

I declared that I had been misled when I was told the bog was ‘dry’. Then I decided I was not misled. I WAS INSANE! I know a bog will not completely dry out. I picked enough bakeapples years ago to know that!!

I inspected Himself, overheated and covered in mud, and examined the two muddy posts that used to be my legs! Then I studied the big bog bike that needed rescuing. After much discussion I was directed to move up further to the front of the bike, put my thumb on the gas, and push the bike at the same time! Himself was pushing from behind. So out came the bike! Mud soaked and covered like me. We traveled on and reached the river and the building site in twenty minutes or so.

I headed for the river and attempted to remove the dried mud that had covered me like a suit of body armor. That mud was like Plaster of Paris when it dried. I could barely move. I smelled like bog, I looked like bog, and my fly bites were in the hundreds. I now truly knew the meaning of the term ‘bogged down’. I also learned what the word ‘itchy’ truly means.

At lunchtime Himself states, "I said to get off the bike where there was a grassy spot!"

"No, you didn’t," I responded, " And the closest grassy spot I could see was fifty feet away and I cannot fly!"

The defense rested.

I am wiser for the experience. Coming back I sure as heck did not get ‘bogged down’, and I enjoyed seeing every picture plant on that colossal bog. It was great!

However, I still had a problem. I had to find someone to accompany me to go back and retrieve Himself.

Seems he had gotten ‘bogged down!’ 

Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe