After spending much of the summer waging war on weeds, finally, after waiting since last September, I was ready to go on my first adventure of the season!
This time, I felt very encouraged about this season, because unlike last year with its 3-year La Niña causing a late start to spring/summer, with high water levels right up into September, we finally have an El Niño! Because of that, we practically jumped into summer in May, with the hot dry weather persisting, causing us to miss out on the "June-uary" cold low rainy season! So, unlike last year when water levels stayed high until early July before starting to drop, this year, water levels started dropping in May, and kept on dropping! But, because of the lack of rain, our drought is getting worse, making forests tinder dry, bringing unprecedented forest fire activity here in BC, and other parts of Canada! 
In fact, there is now a forest fire burning in the Ross Moore Lake area, southwest of Kamloops, which is the area containing almost all of my favorite sinking spots east of Lac Le Jeune, which was also visited by MPV, who filmed a number of scenes at the location known as the "Easy Pond", because of its ease of access (for example: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=26751 viewtopic.php?f=7&t=25975 )! I had been so busy on the produce farm, that I hadn't gone anywhere on my bike since last year, and planned on getting a tune-up. But, my brother needed my dad's truck, and when he was finished with it, it stayed at his farm for a couple of weeks. I wanted to go on my first bikeride of the season before the BC Day long weekend, which ran from August 5th to the 7'th, after which some unsettled weather with some moisture was forecast to move in for a couple days. I wanted to go on Thursday, August 3'rd, but had to move the date to Friday, August 4th, because the truck wasn't brought back until the 3'rd. There was now no time for a tuneup, so on Thursday, I added air to the tires, and made a test run of my bike on our street and driveway, finding that the rear derailleur was sticking, until I moved it by hand and it worked after that. The brakes worked nicely as well, so I was good to go for Friday, August 4'th!
But, while the weather had been nice and clear for the past while, come Thursday evening, something seemed off, with the sun vanishing. 
Looking outside, what was once a clear view of the valley, was now a smoky haze! It happened so fast, coming from the Adam's Lake forest fires to the northwest. I kept my fingers crossed in hopes that it would clear out just as quickly as it moved in.I got up around 5 am, and was disappointed that the air was still milky white from smoke!
I just hoped that the smoke would be thinner up on the plateau. I had to do my watering rounds, because it got too dark before I was ready to do it the previous evening, since I lost the daylight tying on a top saddlebag again, because I had removed it in preparation for the tuneup that didn't happen. My dad and I left after 9 am, and up on the plateau, it was still a bit hazy. The road up top was graded, with no potholes, which my dad was happy about, since last year it had horrible potholes, and he was worried about his truck. On the way up, I was once again disgusted at the recent clearcuts by the road. We turned up Crescent Road, which looked like it was hardly used, meaning not much logging activity there.
But, there was a clearcut on the west side through a line of trees. I watched for the trail entrance to the hidden liquid mud and sticks pond to the east, but I didn't see the familiar entrance, although there was one area with some trees cut on the east side of the road, that looked like it was in that area. 
The road turned from north to west, and further down, my dad dropped me off at the usual grassy clearing on the south side of the road, which looked different, because the clearing was now extended southward in a narrow band into the hills (location for a new logging road perhaps?).I offloaded my things and my bike, and tested out my bike first to make certain it was still functioning properly. The tires were still firm, and things were all right!
He then left, and I finished loading my things on my bike, annoyed by a wasp or hornet that kept on buzzing around me, until I finally left that clearing. But so far, I was happy to see no sign of cattle, not even a cowpie, which made me hopeful that perhaps this year there wouldn't be that many, but then, there would typically be more as we got later into the season. Before heading up my turnoff, I first headed further up Crescent Road to check out the status of two ponds on the south side of the road. The first one was full, with water up to the grass. The second one, further west, was just grass on the north (closer) end, while the south part was mostly hidden by bushes, but looked like it was either open water or mud. I wasn't going to investigate, because I had bigger fish to fry!
I returned to the turnoff, and headed up it, only to find several cattle on the road as I reached the part going by the east side of the east pond! So, there were cattle in the area!
They took off up the road as I got closer to them, and were gone. I noticed that I could just barely get a glimpse of the west side of the west pond, my area, through the bushes, which increasingly blocked most of the view more and more each year. It would only be a matter of time before no one could see my area from the sideroad at all! I reached the side trail that led to my dropoff point north of the pond, having to walk my bike over and around some fallen trees over the trail before I got to the easier part. I dropped my bike off on the north side of some coniferous trees, on the west side of the small clearing, got my things out of my saddlebag, and then decided to swap memory cards in my camera, deleting everything on my adventure memory card to start fresh, everything having been previously transferred to my computer last year.I headed through the grassy trails through the alders to the pond to the south, taking a glimpse at the north end, and seeing mud exposed, which looked encouraging!
The grass surrounding the pond was in tufts, with no water between, but the appearance was of grass that had been growing up through water for some time, with the lower sides of the tufts dead and bleached white. I decided to wait until later before taking any pictures of exposed mud on the north and west sides, because I wanted to head straight to the main attraction! When I finally reached my bog, surrounded by sticks, just as I had hoped, it was all exposed!
There were some animal (bird?) tracks going back and forth across it, and it looked thicker in the west and middle parts. I set my bags of things down on the north side of some alders, my usual spot, got my camera out, and took my first photo of the caged-in patch of quagmire that was going to be sucking me into it!I then put my camera back, removed my shoes, and then proceeded to pull out almost all of the sticks around the bog (accidentally breaking one into two), leaving a few shorter ones that extended further south into the meadow. I could smell the egg-like swamp gas while walking on top of the bouncy floating meadow surrounding my bog. Once all the sticks immediately surrounding the bog were removed and piled in the grass to the southwest of the bog, by the alders, I grabbed my camera again, and walking around the bog counterclockwise, took some more photos:
I then returned to my things with the camera, and began to experiment with it, trying to fix the problem of variations in brightness when different objects move into the frame. I kept taking my swim cap and moving it in front of the camera, seeing the grass turn darker when it was in view, and then turn brighter again when it was out of view. I tried turning off various automatic things, to no avail. But, it seemed like I found something that looked like it might have reduced the effect slightly, although it might have been my imagination.
I set the camera to 16:9 so that I could get a view of the bog as it would appear in the movie for properly framing the location of my sink. I picked out a nice stick from my pile of sticks, and chose a spot on the south side to stick it into. I then had to reposition the stick to get it to be a bit closer to the animal tracks, since that was where I finally decided I was going to be fed to the bog on camera! 
I screwed my camera onto my brand new Gorillapod, something I bought last year to replace the older broken one, but never had a chance to use it then. I then wrapped the knobby tentacles around the top of the stick, and with a bit of fiddling, I finally got it roughly in place! I was a bit concerned about the wind that seemed to be coming up all of a sudden out of the north, which could affect the audio. I was also a bit annoyed that the sky was hazy, which cut the strength of the sun down a little. The air was getting warm, but not as warm as I wanted it to be, although it was still early in the day.I headed back to my things, stripped and changed into my junk shorts, and had to tie an orange plastic bale twine around it to hold it up, since the elastic was gone (I should try and run a string through the inside of those shorts, but there is never enough time). I put the swim cap on inside out, because it was plain fluorescent green that way, while the normal side had white mixed in with the green on top, which might affect the brightness/contrast worse.
I usually had a haircut by this time, but I never yet, so I couldn't get all my hair completely inside, but at least I had most of it protected, as well as my ears. I put on my swim goggles to keep my eyes free of mud, and went back to my camera to make the final adjustments, and to start the filming, only to find that I couldn't see the screen properly. So, I had to go back, put on my sunglasses again, return to the camera, make the final adjustments to properly frame the spot I was going to plunge into, press the Record button, make certain it was recording, return to my things to swap my sunglasses with the swim goggles, and then head to the north side of the bog, in position, ready for action! I was finally going to play out a scenario that I wanted to do on my first sink last year, but couldn't, due to my old Gorillapod having one of its legs completely broken off, and the other two partially broken off, making it unable to hold onto a stick!
Once I had the off-camera sink back then, the mud went under the water for the rest of my season, or at least until Hunting Season! But now, I had a second chance, and couldn't wait to get started! Standing on the edge of the floating sedge grass on the north side of the bog, facing south, I did a little bit of monologue, talking to myself (thinking out loud), which set up the scenario. But then, the north wind started gusting again, and I had to wait for it to die down!
But, rather than start over, I just attributed the pause to indecision whether or not to cross the muddy area at the animal tracks. Finally, I took the fateful leap, the hungry quagmire farting as it gulped me down to my lower chest! I struggled a little, slowly sinking deeper to my upper chest, before pushing my arms beneath the surface, and continuing to struggle, the quivering muck rising over my shoulders, and then to my chin and mouth. The mud was softer and looser on top, while deeper down, it was thicker and pastier, shifting under my feet when I moved them, and readily giving way when I put more weight on each foot! As the voracious mire continued to suck me down deeper into it, I had to tilt my head further and further back to keep my mouth free of the suffocating mud. But it was getting more and more difficult to do so, with me having to repeatedly spit out globs of tasteless creamy, gritty muck that was repeatedly getting sucked into my mouth with the air I was inhaling! I had to tilt my head so far back that the treacherous mire sucked over top of my goggles, claiming them, cutting off my view of the world, with only my nose and mouth able to get air, although I only breathed through my mouth, which was almost getting too difficult to do with the mire closing in and still invading my mouth, forcing me to keep spitting it out! I took one final breath, held it, and began to struggle vigorously, turning my face forward, the mire hungrily sucking me completely under, completely claiming me as its meal on camera! I continued to struggle vigorously underneath the surface for a few more seconds, before becoming still. It felt great to be finally swallowed whole again by a voracious bog! Then, I exhaled some air, the mire passing the gas upwards, where it farted out at the surface above my head! I wanted to remain paused beneath the surface for as long as possible after that to make certain that there would be a good camera view of the still surface, post-bogfarts, but after expending that air from my lungs, my body was screaming for oxygen, and I couldn't stay under any longer! So, finished with my first new dramatic sinking scene since 2021, I worked my feet up higher through the thicker stuff below, and then pushed my upper body back up, my head breaking the surface, coated in a thick layer of batterlike ooze, where I was finally able to fill my lungs with air!
I paused at that level until I caught my breath, before working myself higher up to my upper chest. I then wiped the mud away from my head, noticing that my swim goggles weren't fitting over my eyes properly. I re-positioned them a few times, and continued to wipe mud away from my head, and then working my feet up higher through the thicker mud below, rising higher, and then wiping more mud off. I was a bit annoyed at the wind which kept coming up, making me feel a bit chilled! Once I was high enough, I was able to twist around and make my way to the floating grass on the north side of the bog, where I wiped the rest of the mud off my body into the bog (need to conserve it as much as possible).Free of the grip of the hungry quagmire, I then headed over to the edge of the pond, where I cleaned my hands, and then returned to my camera on the south side of the bog and fumbled around to find the record button to stop the recording, something which was very difficult to see through my boggy goggles (boggles?
). I then turned the camera off, and returned to the pond to clean off, the water just starting to warm up, but still a bit cool lower down, with chilly pockets where water came out from underneath the floating vegetation. I cleaned my head and upper body off, including my swim goggles and swim cap, my hair nice and dry and clean underneath, except for the bottom where it had stuck out from the swim cap. I also rubbed my back on the floating mat of small rushes to take care of the scum left by the thick mud on my skin (nature's scrub brush), then splashing water over my back to rinse off the loose debris. I also removed my junk shorts and cleaned it and the string in the water, before hanging it and the goggles and swim cap on some alder branches to dry further on shore on the south side of the path between my things and my bog.To Be Continued...
So, I worked myself out onto the floating grass on the east side, wiping mud off my body and into the bog. I then returned to the pond, where I cleaned myself out again. The bottom was all the same mud, but I could make my way though it and crawl on top of it, but yellow waterlily rhizomes made it easier to have stable footing (or sitting/kneeling). I cleaned myself off just like before, but this time all the way down to my feet, which had to be done in stages, with my lowest parts cleaned on the floating rushes, which sunk under the water from my weight and sprung back up after I moved away. All clean, I headed out further away from the pond, and air-dried in the hazy smoky sun. I also grabbed my camera and took a photo of the bog, even more disturbed than before:
I worked myself back up, pushing mud off my skin as I went. Once I was high enough, I was able to pull myself out on the west side, pushing the mud off my lower body and legs and feet, where the thickest mud stuck to, back into the bog. I then headed back to the pond to do my final cleanup, cleaning my front easily, and then my back easily by rubbing my back against the mat of tiny rushes that were on the edge of the floating meadow (nature's scrub brush), and then splashing water over it to wash away the looser debris. I cleaned my lower body sitting, then kneeling, then standing on the edge of the floating meadow, where water rushed in over top of it from my weight.
So, I grabbed the breathing hose and sunk part of it in the mud to hide it from the camera, smoothing over the surface, with my mouth end sticking out where I wanted to sink, and the back end exiting the muck onto the grass on the south side. However, since the mat of grass had some water on it, I was concerned that water might get into the hose while I was breathing through it! 
Next time, it will be thicker, with more pressure on my chest at any given depth.