Quicksand: A Collage and Blog for LMAC #72
It's that time of the week again: another amazing photo by @shaka for the LMAC community to manipulate. This week's photo is of a country scene, which is always particularly evocative for me, because I spent most of my childhood in the country.
Here is @shaka's photo:
Near my childhood home there was a place in the forest where my brother claimed we could find quicksand. One day, he took my sister and me to that place.
Quicksand in Lower King Bridge, Albany, Western Australia
Image credit: Hughsdarren. Used under a CC 4.0 license.
I've always wondered, was it truly quicksand? I have found several mentions of quicksand in areas surrounding my home--we lived in the foothills of the Shawangunk Mountains. One thing is certain: the black pool of mud my brother took us to did act like quicksand on the day we hiked there.
Shawangunk Ridge in New York State, USA
Image credit: Bob K. Used under CC 3.0 license
What Is Quicksand?
There are some myths about quicksand, and there are some realities. Quicksand looks solid, but changes in response to stress and can liquify. As an article in ThoughtCo explains, quicksand is a non-Newtonian fluid. If you put weight on it, it becomes less viscous (more liquid). Thrashing about increases this liquifying tendency. That's why movies show thrashing victims being consumed by quicksand.
However, thrashing about and being pulled down is not likely to happen in real life--though death is possible, (see this news article) because you can get stuck.
Quicksand: Vertical Column of Water Filled with Very Fine Sand
Image credit:Panoramio user 4805004 JF Hobbs. Used under CC license 3.0 Picture taken near near Chubbuck, Bannock County, Idaho.
According to ThoughtCo,quicksand "can be a mixture of sand and water, silt and water, clay and water, sediment and water, or even sand and air". There also is the phenomenon of dry quicksand, which may form in the desert and may be quite dangerous. Dry quicksand forms when very fine sand settles upon more granular sand.
It is believed astronauts face the danger of dry quicksand when they explore Mars and the Moon. (Information derived from ThoughtCo)
Moon Soil
Image credit: NASA. Public domain
Thought.co lists several ways you can conceivably die if you get stuck in quicksand--though none of these are likely to happen: drowning (if you are near water and the tide washes over you), hypothermia, suffocation, crush syndrome (!), dehydration and predators.
My Collage
The picture of the dog above was extracted from a larger photo. We had many dogs when I was a child. I don't remember this dog, but all of them were important to us.
One day we found one of our dogs had been poisoned. We needed to conduct a proper ceremony, a burial. However, it was winter and the ground was frozen. So my brother thought of the bog in the forest.
We took our dog, Hortense, up to the bog and decided to let the quicksand be her resting place. The process was slow, but Hortense did eventually disappear from view.
The collage is my impression of that day.
The Figures
Two of the figures are me, extracted from photos and manipulated. The center figure represents my brother. His image was also extracted from a photo and manipulated significantly. I wanted the children to look spectral.
In order to place the collage in a bog, I made a mirror image of @shaka's photo to broaden the view. Then I superimposed the trees on a swamp photo found on Unsplash. I worked with that a bit and filled in the water with mud (painted with GIMP). Accents, such as grass, a twig and a log came from Paint 3D.
An Alternate Version of the Collage
Thank you @shaka for the adventure, again. I used a new tool in Gimp this week, waterpixels. Every time I make a collage, I learn :) Readers of this blog, I invite you to join in. Check out the rules on @shaka's blog. Check out the dizzying array of collages on LMAC. There are prizes, and a school with lessons created by one of our artists, @quantumg. Did you ever want to paint a cloud? @quantumg shows us how to do that in his latest lesson.
Finally, there is a community. All are welcome. Try it one week.
Hello friend, it's good that you spent time in the field, thank God nothing happened to them in those shifting lands as they were small, innocent children, without knowing the danger that could have happened.
Hello my friend, @cetb2008. Yes, growing up with nature all around was good. However, there were dangers. But everywhere there is danger. In the city, parents worry about strangers and traffic. In the country we worry about cliffs and quicksand :)) My brother was very clever, though, a real woodsman. He was like a little man, so that helped.
Thank you for your visit and your insightful comment.
Buena idea usar esta anécdota de tu vida para plasmarla en tu collage, suerte en el concurso amigo🤗🤗
Muchas gracias, amiga.
There are many anecdotes from my childhood that come back vividly to me. I'm glad you found this one to be interesting. Have a great day!
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https://twitter.com/A_G_Moore/status/1371616978939613185
You retrieved a memory from your childhood and have the land looking like quicksand by the water. The children in your collage are naturally sad to lose their dog. They are standing apart , each in their own thoughts and grief.I’m not sure of the significant of the white children but thought maybe the innocence of youth.
I never thought about quicksand a danger on the moon or mars. I know my father used to warn us about it when we wandered around the fields and streams.
Great collage and you always leave food for thought A.G.
No one ever warned us, about anything :)) Except to stay out of trouble. My brother was the scout, the woodsman. I thought he was indestructible. If my brother said it was OK, then it was OK. I guess we were lucky
The children are white for two reason: one, I was trying to make them symbolic, not specific. So, even though two of them are me, you can't tell. Also, I wanted to suggest the somber, sort of ghost-like atmosphere that prevailed. The kids do look a little ghosty :)
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your experience up there in Canada. Thank you for your generosity!
Most welcome A.G. 🌺 I remember wishing I had an older brother,...mainly to help with the chores.:) Being the oldest I was the one who scouted out new areas to explore. My father was a forest ranger when I was younger and I often went with him. Trips with him were always fun and educational about nature.
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When reading your post I remember a movie in which quicksand could be said to be the main character, I remember seeing many people get lost under that mud, it really was not pleasant, even maybe I was a bit marked because it gives me chills to remember, imagine one movie, in real life it would be creepy
Thank you for commenting! It was creepy. I'll admit this was an unforgettable experience. I had been in the swamp many times but never saw quicksand except this once. It did make quite and impression.
Hi, @agmoore, thanks for the tip! 💪 😎
:) You're welcome!
AGMoore's Edu collages series is my favorite science magazine on Hive. ^ __ ^
I am always curious about which interesting topic you come across every LMAC round. This round again I found the topic and also the short excursion into your own history very interesting.
Thank you for the very interesting explanations.
It was a good idea to depict the characters in black and white. So they look a bit like ghosts of history.
Who does such bad deeds with dogs, man's best and most loyal friend? They can only be cowards. It's so sneaky and evil!
One of the few things that really piss me off is dog poisoners. If I read or hear about such crimes I could explode with anger! GRRRR
The poor dog. I hope he didn't have to suffer too long.
When I was a child, I first only knew quicksand from Winnetou and Old Shatterhand records. My friends and I often re-enacted these adventures, using the sandpit in the playground for the quicksand. :-D
After my family moved to another federal state (Baden-Württemberg to Hesse), we lived next to a mine. There were small patches of quicksand everywhere on the abandoned surface sites. My sandpit love once got caught in such a trap. Fortunately it was not deep and with some effort and my help, she was able to get back on land quickly. She described the consistency as kind of oddly viscosious.
After that I was always tempted to try it out myself. But then we moved to another town again. xD
Hello @quantumg,
I thought the theme might be a little grim for our collage fest, but my husband and son said it would be OK so I felt more confident. Thank you for coming by and commenting. The comments actually mean a lot to me, sometimes more than the votes.
Quicksand is almost everywhere, isn't it? I never realized until I wrote this blog. I just looked up Winnetou. That's a new one for me. Karl May: A German author who writes books about the American West. Might be a good way for me to practice my aural/reading skills in German. Thanks for the information.
As for the poison: We never found out who did it. Kind of creepy, knowing that person was still out there.
I'm so happy you won first place. It's not always (usually not!) that the best collage takes the prize, but this week it did :)
Your men were right. :-)
I like to comment on your posts. Because you're reading the comments obviously.
Haha. It's worth reading. Be prepared for some "oddities". :-D
Many say he's just a liar. I say he's a fantastic liar.
This man had so much imagination that he lived in it and when he wrote about it it was as if he was remembering his fantastic adventures.
I am sure he / she got his / her punishment. Such people never get really happy and often get very sick. Malice eats its way from the soul through the body.
Thank you. :-) This time I was very surprised, in view of these gifted competitors.
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