Quest for PQ: The Dream of Major Bull Project #17
Posted on 06/04/09 3:00 PM| by Osprey
Ten Squishy Toes, etc.
As usual, my training comes in many strange and unusual forms.
Although I have insisted that my birthday isn’t until I reach the finish at PQ this year, I had decided that I needed to do something fun and interesting (and very Dutch) for my actual birthday weekend (May 23- 24). I decided to go wadlopen. (www.wadlopen.net)
Literally translated, wadlopen means mud walking (wad = mud, lopen = walking). This is an activity that is special and unusual to the Dutch culture. Because so much of the land mass of the Netherlands has been reclaimed from the ocean, wadlopen is what happens when the tide of the North Sea retreats to such an extent that you can literally walk on water; or at least what used to be water.
When the tide is in, you can stand at the ferry terminal in the town of Holwerd and watch a raging sea bash against the sea wall. When the tide is out, you can walk from the mainland to the several islands that lay just a few (6-10) kilometres from the mainland. It is an odd and surreal sensation to feel like you are literally walking on water.
The trip started innocently enough with a group of about 35 or so people from all over the world. We get a little talk in Dutch to stay with the group, don’t wander off, and listen to your guide. After that, the whole group just goes from the paved parking lot out into the innocuous landscape of the tidal flats. The uninitiated then promptly sink knee deep into the primordial ooze that is left over when the sea has done its business. The reaction is beyond description; from “yuck” (my friend Maureen) to “full-belly laughter” (yours truly). I just had a blast when watching the group, one by one, sink so deep in the mud that the retrieval of the loosely tied shoes took two hands. This was only the first hour of our three hour tour (a three hour tour).
It took about the first 35 minutes or so to get your stride and walk a bit like an Egyptian. A small slide in your step has you on top of the sea floor instead of in it. We were then blessed with a water walk that was about waist high, then across some oyster beds, and then back into the brackish swamp sludge. It was to be a recurring theme over the course of the 10 kilometre walk that ended on the island of Ameland where we then walked across the dunes to the North Sea to wash up and catch our breath in time to catch the tractor ride back to the local town of Nes. A further wash had us celebrating the day’s efforts in typical Todd style- beer in hand. Would you have thought I would celebrate in any other way?
The countdown to race day is fast approaching. A blend of nervousness, excitement and sheer terror visits me each day as I continue to train. I see the unusual experience of wadlopen as a precursor of what is to come in the course of 7 days of Badlands mud and muck. I continue to train by every fun and unusual way I can and yet I still don’t feel ready. I am beginning to wonder if I ever will be. If my experience this weekend taught me anything, it was to enjoy the pleasure of the unique. That is what being ready means for me at the moment. Take the pain, take the effort, and take the overwhelming physicality of this endeavour and find the pleasure in each moment.
Todd Phillips
quest4pq@gmail.com
