Barry, I understand your feelings.
In my case I was at the edge of a rain fed creek in the Florida panhandle.
While I was looking for Drosera and Pings I took a step down onto a flat sandy
bar by the edge of the water. The feel of my foot as it hit what I thought was
firm sand has stayed with me ever since. At first, my foot sank just an inch
or two, just as you would expect with soft wet sand. Then, I broke through the
thin layer and it felt like I was stepping off into space.
The only comparison I have is the way it feels when you step on a heavy snow
whose surface has melted and refrozen over night. As you step down you feel a
little crunch, and then suddenly the frozen surface breaks and you sink all the
way to the ground.
Unfortunately the sand bar had no ground below it and in a hair second I went
from standing up to being sunk up to my hip. To this day the only thing that I
think kept me from going all the way in was that when my foot broke through, I
fell back with my weight on the leg that was still on firm ground.
In some ways the scariest part was that when I scrambled back up, I looked back
and the sand bar looked just as firm as it had before I stepped on it.
To this day I imagine my wife getting out of the car to see where I have
disappeared to this time, only to be greeted with my lonely straw hat laying
on a patch of sand.
Tom in Fl