Have you ever had a great experience involving quicksand? Well, so have I! Quicksand is pretty fun when you encounter it in the right context. Such as a four-hour hike bent double through a wilderness of thorn bushes, using a backpack as a battering ram and an old wool coat as a form of armor.

When you've been bushwhacking- and that term has never been more literal- through such a thick and tangled jungle of needle-sharp thorns, so thick that you can't even see the sun, then you are really prepared to encounter quicksand. It is only in circumstances such as these that a good pool of really sticky quicksand takes on its most sublime and poignant qualities.

Imagine my surprise and delight as I stumbled out, bleeding, with my clothes all in tatters, from the fortress of thorns- only to see my walking stick sinking with frightening speed into the seemingly solid pathway directly in front of me.

Imagine the pleasure I took in the intellectual challenge of it, as I tried to figure out how to get past the quicksand and continue on my merry way, without returning to the thorns that crowded the sides of the trail I had just discovered.

Imagine the deep sense of satisfaction, as I concluded that the only way forward was to take a running leap, clear the quicksand like Indiana Jones, and hopefully land on something that was not also quicksand.

Do you see what I mean? There's no way to really appreciate an experience like quicksand, without first having an experience with a few thousand thorn bushes. If you haven't experienced the thorny quicksand, you just haven't really lived.