Late afternoon the tide was so low I put on my old boots and went for a walk which ended up partly in the muddy, inchoate mangroves, and partly on the sandstone banks of our little Bay. I certainly didn't get to walk far with the sludge sucking on every footstep. I didn't much like walking on the little mangroves shoots either.

There's something kind of spooky about entering the mangrove flats, I suppose, primeval. It's all too easy to imagine a creature coming up out of the ooze.

Still, it's beautiful in that primitive way. I suppose some part of our brain still resonates strongly with the pull of the mud, even after we have risen so far above it.