My family first met Mark as he pulled up in his 1945 fire truck, ringing the bell. This father of three will do almost anything to entertain children. He's organized pee-wee tennis clinics that start in summer at 8 a.m. and activities like scavenger hunts, arts and crafts, sand-castle contests, and bodysurfing on adjacent three-mile-long South Beach. In the evening, kids can go to the clubhouse for food and games while parents opt for fine dining at the resort's seaside restaurant, Opus, or head into Edgartown, the island's oldest settlement.
We favored getting on our rented bikes and hitting the trails. One day we pedaled to Edgartown and took the two-minute ferry across to Chappaquiddick, and then rode to the Cape Poge Wildlife Refuge, a stretch of coast that's home to threatened piping plovers and ospreys. On our final day, we ventured ten miles to Oak Bluffs, stopping at the windswept dunes of Joseph Sylvia State Beach to swim, and ending at the Flying Horses Carousel, the country's oldest operating carousel, built in 1876. Not surprisingly, Snider picked us up by boat to escort us back to the resort.

Harrison, Idaho

Hidden Creek Ranch
CAPACITY – 40 guests
SADDLE UP – This is touchy-feely ranching: Guests learn “centered riding,” an awareness technique to improve body language on a horse. Ride the foothills of the Bitterroot Range surrounding the ranch, 28 miles southeast of Coeur d'Alene. Stargaze on evening rides.
OUT OF THE SADDLE – Pontoon boat tours float you up the Coeur d'Alene River into Blue Lake for swimming, or practice moves on the 58-foot outdoor climbing wall. There's yoga daily and a weekly session at a sweat lodge.
LODGING – Each of the six log cabins has two to four bedrooms and a bathroom and overlooks the horse stables in the Hidden Creek valley.
GRUB HIGHLIGHT – The dark-chocolate-mousse napoleon.
KIDS – Free program covers educational topics, like animal care and plant identification, and gets kids (ages three to 11) out on a ropes course.
COST – $2,165 per adult per week; $1,776 per child three to 11; kids under three stay free.
CONTACT – 800-446-3833,

Roy, New Mexico

Hidden Creek Ranch
CAPACITY – 40 guests
SADDLE UP – This is touchy-feely ranching: Guests learn “centered riding,” an awareness technique to improve body language on a horse. Ride the foothills of the Bitterroot Range surrounding the ranch, 28 miles southeast of Coeur d'Alene. Stargaze on evening rides.
OUT OF THE SADDLE – Pontoon boat tours float you up the Coeur d'Alene River into Blue Lake for swimming, or practice moves on the 58-foot outdoor climbing wall. There's yoga daily and a weekly session at a sweat lodge.
LODGING – Each of the six log cabins has two to four bedrooms and a bathroom and overlooks the horse stables in the Hidden Creek valley.
GRUB HIGHLIGHT – The dark-chocolate-mousse napoleon.
KIDS – Free program covers educational topics, like animal care and plant identification, and gets kids (ages three to 11) out on a ropes course.
COST – $2,165 per adult per week; $1,776 per child three to 11; kids under three stay free.
CONTACT – 800-446-3833,

Kamas, Utah

The Diamond J Ranch
CAPACITY – 16 guests
SADDLE UP – Rides fan out from the ranch, 13 miles east of Park City between the Uinta and Wasatch mountain ranges, and vary from two to eight hours—destinations include Mirror Lake at 11,000 feet. Sunset and overnight rides are offered.
OUT OF THE SADDLE – Swim, hike, and fish for trout at the Jordanelle Reservoir. Rent mountain bikes in Kamas and tear up beginner to advanced trails out your back door.
LODGING – The luxurious five-bedroom, Spanish-style lodge has two suites and three double rooms. It’s flanked by another building with three bedrooms. Each has a private deck, kitchen, fireplace, and hot tub.
GRUB HIGHLIGHT – Stuffed cinnamon-raisin French toast. (Lunch and dinner are not included in the weekly price, but you can order dinners at the ranch.)
KIDS – There’s no set program, but kids like feeding horses and day trips to Park City.
COST – Rent the five-bedroom lodge for $12,500 per week; one bedroom, from $2,500.
CONTACT – 866-346-6635,

Del Rio, Tennessee

The Diamond J Ranch
CAPACITY – 16 guests
SADDLE UP – Rides fan out from the ranch, 13 miles east of Park City between the Uinta and Wasatch mountain ranges, and vary from two to eight hours—destinations include Mirror Lake at 11,000 feet. Sunset and overnight rides are offered.
OUT OF THE SADDLE – Swim, hike, and fish for trout at the Jordanelle Reservoir. Rent mountain bikes in Kamas and tear up beginner to advanced trails out your back door.
LODGING – The luxurious five-bedroom, Spanish-style lodge has two suites and three double rooms. It’s flanked by another building with three bedrooms. Each has a private deck, kitchen, fireplace, and hot tub.
GRUB HIGHLIGHT – Stuffed cinnamon-raisin French toast. (Lunch and dinner are not included in the weekly price, but you can order dinners at the ranch.)
KIDS – There’s no set program, but kids like feeding horses and day trips to Park City.
COST – Rent the five-bedroom lodge for $12,500 per week; one bedroom, from $2,500.
CONTACT – 866-346-6635,

Utica, Montana

The Diamond J Ranch
CAPACITY – 16 guests
SADDLE UP – Rides fan out from the ranch, 13 miles east of Park City between the Uinta and Wasatch mountain ranges, and vary from two to eight hours—destinations include Mirror Lake at 11,000 feet. Sunset and overnight rides are offered.
OUT OF THE SADDLE – Swim, hike, and fish for trout at the Jordanelle Reservoir. Rent mountain bikes in Kamas and tear up beginner to advanced trails out your back door.
LODGING – The luxurious five-bedroom, Spanish-style lodge has two suites and three double rooms. It's flanked by another building with three bedrooms. Each has a private deck, kitchen, fireplace, and hot tub.
GRUB HIGHLIGHT – Stuffed cinnamon-raisin French toast. (Lunch and dinner are not included in the weekly price, but you can order dinners at the ranch.)
KIDS – There's no set program, but kids like feeding horses and day trips to Park City.
COST – Rent the five-bedroom lodge for $12,500 per week; one bedroom, from $2,500.
CONTACT – 866-346-6635,

Ridgway, Colorado

Little house in the valley.

MacTiernan's San Juan Guest Ranch
CAPACITY – 35 guests

SADDLE UP – Ride from the Uncompahgre Valley up to ridges above 12,000 feet in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. The daily rides last from an hour to all day; after riding, linger near the barn for steer-roping lessons.

OUT OF THE SADDLE – Fish for trout in the ranch's stocked ponds or join a wrangler to fly-fish the nearby Uncompahgre River. Hike in the San Juans or just soak in the Ouray Hot Springs, five miles from the ranch. A hot-air balloon ride is offered for $125.

LODGING – The lodge is painted to resemble a barn and has nine suites, each with a private bathroom and small refrigerator, that accommodate two to eight people.

GRUB HIGHLIGHT – The peach cobbler baked over an open fire.

KIDS – Free program includes trout fishing and panning for gold near an abandoned mining cabin (ages five to ten).

COST – $1,495 per adult per week; $1,195 for kids five to ten; $350 for kids under five.

CONTACT – 800-331-3015,

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“Horses are afraid of two things,” Dan Morin explained, taking off his Stetson and settling himself near the huge granite fireplace in the parlor of his Sundance Trail Guest Ranch. “Everything that moves and everything that doesn’t.”

Cowboy Dustin

Riding on the east side of the ranch

A kitten wrangler at Sundance Trail Guest Ranch

Saddle blankets

Dowdy Lake, in the town of Red Feather Lakes

Dan was giving two dozen of us dudes the introductory talk for our week at the ranch, and it wasn’t going well. The thing to remember about horses, he said, is that they are at the bottom of the food chain. Everything eats them, given a chance: bobcats, wolves, lynxes, mountain lions. “Think of a horse as a very large rabbit,” he suggested, one that will select from three unpleasant responses at the first hint of danger: buck, bolt, or bite. The art of riding, therefore, seemed to consist mostly of avoiding stuff your horse might be afraid of. Yeah, yeah, I thought. But what if you’re afraid of the horse?

Given that fear, it may sound odd that I brought my wife, Barbara, and seven-year-old daughter, Maddy, out from Vermont last August to spend a week at a dude ranch in Red Feather Lakes, Colorado, 37 miles northwest of Fort Collins. But the fact is that I didn’t have to spend the entire week surrounded by stampeding cattle, being yelled at by leathery wranglers, or constantly in the saddle. Sundance is a sort of multisport adventure center offering a hyperactive menu on top of riding: hiking, rock climbing, mountain biking, fishing, whitewater rafting, four-wheeling, archery, riflery—the full western octathlon.

Besides, my wife loves riding, and she hoped Maddy would like it, too. I wanted to explore the Colorado Rockies, and I didn’t want to go on foot because, to misquote Gertrude Stein, there’s too much there, there. So we’d do it the old-fashioned way: on horseback. And that’s how—even though tall hats look silly on me and, having grown up in England, I’d already eaten enough beans for a lifetime—I started thinking about ranches.

Dude ranching started to catch on in the 1850s, when western farmers, always on the lookout for a second income, started hosting aristocratic adventurers from Britain, Ireland, and Russia in search of good hunting. One party in 1871, guided by Buffalo Bill Cody, shot more than 600 bison and 200 elk, and traveled the Colorado Territory with French chefs and 25 wagons, including three that served as mobile icehouses.

My favorite dude was my countrywoman Isabella Bird, who visited Colorado in 1873. She survived rattlesnakes, locusts, and ghastly frontier food (she described one entrée as “black with living, drowned, and half-drowned flies”). Bird rounded up cattle and climbed Longs Peak—which at 14,255 feet was a considerable achievement, even if her detractors say that she was hauled up the difficult parts in a basket.

Today’s dude ranching is, frankly, less arduous. The Sundance Trail lodge is a large A-frame log cabin, perhaps built by someone familiar with Architectural Digest, flanked by two smaller cabins, housing a total of 24 guests. Built in 1968, the lodge has a large dining room as well as a parlor, two guest suites, and quarters for the owners, Dan and his wife, Ellen. We stayed out back in a kind of woodsy duplex among the trees that comprised a one-bedroom and a two-bedroom suite. Our quarters were small yet comfortable, with a shower but, thank God, no TV or telephone. Sundance is neither Old West nor New Age, more like an amiable, unpretentious family home, with big picture windows and pine furniture, that happens to have a lot of land and a lot of horses.

And I mean a lot of land. The ranch is on 140 acres, surrounded by 660,000 acres of Roosevelt National Forest between the Mummy and Rawah ranges of the Rockies, a remarkable setting: yellow-gray granite hills like stacks of pancakes; forests of ponderosa pine, aspen, and Norway spruce; a floor of sand, pine needles, carpet juniper, and fragments of dead branches, bleached like bones. At 8,000 feet, poisonous snakes are rare. Sundance is too high for most insects, too. Just the brilliant western sky, broad-tailed hummingbirds around the porch, cool nights, and the sighing of the wind in the pines.

After his first-morning talk, Dan led us down to the corral, where we met the wranglers, all age 20 or 21: Dustin, Josh, Lonni (the children’s wrangler), and Rifka. All four, in addition to having spent most of their lives in the saddle, were college kids working over their summer break.

“If your butt’s sore,” Dustin was saying in his droll cowboy way, “your stirrups are too long. If your knees are sore, your stirrups are too short. If both of ’em are sore, your stirrups are about right.”

We were all quizzed about our level of horsemanship and assigned horses for the week accordingly. The more experienced dudes were eyeing lean horses distantly related to the Maserati; I was hoping for something like a 1964 Land Rover. By then all I could remember of Dan’s talk was that one end of a horse kicked and the other bit.

Sundance Trail has a stable of 21 quarter horses and leases 30 more for the summer visitors. My prospective mount, a roan named Redman, squinted at me sideways, his eyes barely open in a resentful and reptilian leer. “I am not a mountain lion,” I told him. “I am not a bobcat. I am not a wolf.”

These calming words must have done the trick, for once I was up in the saddle, the ground a distant memory, Redman turned out to be amiable and touch-sensitive, if rather generous in his output of methane. By the second day I was giving him little more than a twitch of the rein or a nudge of the heel. I realized that “ride” is used in two opposite senses: to be in charge or to give up control. When your horse is descending a steep, narrow trail, picking its way through sand and stones, you have to ride by letting go, releasing your hips to go with the horse while the rest of you remains level—like surfing from the waist down.

We graduated from one-hour rides, along the piney trails that surrounded the ranch, to three- and four-hour rides among the buttery rocks that made up the ridges. Dustin sang cowboy songs, Josh told cowboy jokes, and nobody got yelled at or stampeded. On the last day we rode out to a panoramic outdoor breakfast up on a rocky knoll, and those who were expert riders and hadn’t eaten too much galloped back. When we weren’t on horseback—and as the week went on, each family increasingly wandered from the herd—we took evening hikes to some of the surrounding outcrops, shot pool in the rec room, explored the area in the ranch’s jeep, and spent more and more time lounging around on the porch, talking more slowly.

Some of the more traditional western activities were less of a hit. When we drove 15 miles downslope to the bend-in-the-road hamlet of Livermore to watch the weekly calf-roping—a strange and demanding sport—some were bemused. (“Novel concept,” observed Ken, an architect from Philadelphia. “Recreational cattle.”) Others, like Barbara, were appalled at the squeals of the calves, rushing down the chute ahead of the cattle prods.

“You just ate beef kebab,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but I didn’t play with my food,” she retorted.

The beauty of Sundance was that everyone—the adults as well as the kids, who ranged from three to 15 years old—found and fell into his or her own rhythm. The two 15-year-olds, for example, invoked the Teenager’s Bill of Rights: One was happy enough not joining in much of anything; the other made a token appearance on horseback, then spent the rest of the week rafting. Our family found rhythms we’d never have expected. I overcame my unease around horses and my fear of heights (I thought that on rock-climbing day, they’d have to haul me up in a basket) and ended up whooping and swinging across the 60-foot rock face like Spider-Man. Yet I probably got the most pleasure from teaching Maddy and her new friends Faye, 9, Kirk, 10, and Patrick, 11, how to play cricket with a branch and a pine cone, a multicultural sporting feat beyond even Isabella Bird.

Barbara followed Maddy over to the rifle range—a couple of shelves of tin cans set up in the trees—and, to her own amazement, turned out to be a markswoman.

Maddy, surrounded by so much that was new, never became entirely comfortable on a horse and balked at the rock face, but found her own fun, hiking and clambering up the boulders around the ranch with the other younger kids, in pursuit of a dozen cats. No one suspected that her favorite day would turn out to be the afternoon we spent whitewater rafting.

Even though the Cache La Poudre River, normally Class III and IV, was so low that August that we could have hopped out and walked—and our guide from Rocky Mountain ºÚÁϳԹÏÍøs did, whenever we ran onto rocks—we all paddled hard, screamed harder, and spun downstream. When the five-mile outing was over, Maddy and I fell out of the raft and floated around in our life jackets.

“Can we do it again?” she asked, and she’s still asking.

The post The New Dude appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.

“Zoe keeps poking me with a stick,” Maddy complained, dodging around the parking lot near the Appalachian Trail sign.

Illustration by Brian Cronin

After two hours in the car, we were at our worst. Zoe, 14, and Maddy, six, were driving each other crazy, my wife, Barbara, was impatient, and I had turned into the tyrant father. We had come to do letterboxing, damn it, and letterboxing we would do.

An outdoor activity that originated in England in the late 1800s, letterboxing is part orienteering, part treasure hunt. It has grown geometrically since it was introduced in the United States in its current form just five years ago. Here’s how it works: One player goes to an area suitable for a fine hike—usually on public land—and hides a waterproof box containing a notebook, an ink pad, and a rubber stamp designed for that site. He or she then comes up with clues (sometimes clear, sometimes cryptic) describing the whereabouts of the stash and shares them with other players, usually by posting them on the Letterboxing North America Web site, .
Checking the southern Vermont page of the site, I’d noticed that three letterboxes had been hidden in the shadow of Killington Peak, all within a couple miles of Maine Junction, where the Appalachian Trail heads northeast toward Maine and the Long Trail north toward Canada. All were marked “Clues: Easy” and “Terrain: Moderate”—ideal for the members of our tennis/cricket/yoga/soccer family, who regard hiking as a form of punishment. I printed out the clues, we drove down from our home in northern Vermont, and now, as I stuffed my pockets with the compass and our signature stamps (bought, not homemade—a sure sign of our novice status), I was determined to scoop all three.

We headed purposefully into the woods, Maddy using her hiking stick as if poling a gondola. It was a hard mile uphill, and even the thrill of the treasure hunt was beginning to pall when Zoe let out a whoop that echoed through the forest. She had found the trail junction.

When we caught up with her, we were in for a shock: a hunter crouched by the trail, his rifle erect. Three more soon appeared from the trees, and one pointed out helpfully that Zoe’s faux-sheepskin coat made her look like a deer. By letterboxing standards, this was a bit extreme. Insects and poison ivy are regarded as natural hazards of the sport; being shot at is not.

Trying to pretend the hunters weren’t there, I read the clue aloud: Choose one trail, note its compass bearing, and proceed the same number of paces down the trail. There, we would see a pair of yellow birches to the right, their roots entwined. Under roots and rock, we’d find the box.

We tried the right-hand trail, at 80 degrees. After 80 paces we found ten thousand birches, many of them entwined, many on rocks, none of them over boxes. A certain amount of head scratching, rock turning, and cursing under the breath are to be expected, but the sun was sinking and the air cooling appreciably. We read the instructions for the seventieth time and realized that we were at a junction all right, but it was not Maine Junction. The trail, and the junction, had been moved. Forget about getting all three boxes; we’d be lucky to find one.

It was only the challenge that kept us going. With Zoe and her coat sandwiched between Barbara and me, we strode around Deer Leap Mountain, loudly singing English nonsense songs from my father’s days in the Boy Scouts. We stopped to look at distant ponds, odd insects, vast fungi, and strange, asbestoslike fibers that were growing on a dead branch. This is the real appeal of letterboxing: It gets people outdoors who otherwise would be playing Final Fantasy or watching the Cartoon Network. At last we reached Maine Junction. I took bearings: The birches were either ten to 20 paces down the Long Trail or 80 to 90 down the Appalachian. Barbara and the girls rooted around the LT; I followed the AT out of sight. I’d just found a pair of giant birches, their roots entwined over a hollow big enough to hold an entire post office, when I heard faint voices calling jubilantly through the trees. Barbara had found the box.
It was between a pair of slim birches, among the crisp fallen leaves, hidden under a single stone—just where it was supposed to be, in fact. Inside the small plastic lunchbox, protected by a plastic bag, was a notebook containing twenty or so stamp imprints, some crude, one an astonishingly beautiful, intricate cockerel; a small ink pad; and the Maine Junction stamp—an L pointing west and an A pointing east. Ecstatic, we stamped in—a zebra, a jug, a frame of film, a skateboard—and signed our names. The girls stamped their own notebooks with the Maine Junction stamp.

Suddenly we weren’t tired any more. After all, a puzzle solved at home is a puzzle solved; a puzzle collectively solved in darkening woods is a family triumph. We sang almost all the way back to the car.

The post Get A Clue appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.

GORDON GREEN, INVENTOR OF BOG SNORKELING, strips down to his shorts, pulls on blue overalls and rubber boots, and climbs down into the muddy water of an overgrown drainage ditch. Almost at once, the peaty liquid reaches critical scrotum depth.

Bog love god: English snorkeler Martin Fisher, 25, stands rall after finishing third in the trench

Sixty Yards of pure slime: the Waen Rhydd bog on race day

Julia Galvin emerges from the murky depths

Big win, li'l trophy: For world-record holder John Cantillion, it's the thought that counts

“Bloody hell, that's cold,” Green says. Mid-Wales is never tropical, and even on a partly sunny day in late August, the stagnant water is at shriveling temperature.

“The little spheres trying to retreat into the body, are they?” inquires Mark Bradburn helpfully.

Green, 66, is innkeeper in the village of Llanwrtyd Wells in the county of Powys. Silver-haired, medium height, he has the perpetually bemused look of a man who has just misplaced his glasses. Bradburn, a local builder, is some 25 years younger, short, dark, cheerful, and built like a pink brick. They and I are in a soggy field at the end of a dirt track barely wide enough for two sheep to pass, on the slopes of beautiful bare green hills called the Eppynt Mountains. A fox bounds away toward a cluster of wind-bent trees; above us a Welsh hawk, a long-tailed red kite, swoops cleanly across the sky.
Bradburn hands Green a tree saw, and Green begins to hack away at the roots of the thick clumps of sedge, five feet long and slimy with algae, that have encroached into the bog over the past year. Bradburn and I, each with one foot on the bank, the other thigh-deep in slime, haul them out and throw them over the barbed-wire fence that runs down one side of the trench, where they land with soggy thumps. Bubbles rise all around Green as he works, giving off a smell like a cross between stale beer and farts. “That's methane,” he says mildly. “Pity it's all getting released now, really. Maybe it'll have built up again by Monday.”

Monday, August 28, is the day when 57 people from all over the world will converge on the bog, which is locally known as Waen Rhydd (pronounced, roughly, “Wine Wreath”), in Llanwrtyd Wells (“Thlan-oor-tid”), to compete in the 15th World Bog Snorkelling Championships. And Green, as the sport's visionary, custodian, impresario, and general Master of the Bog, would like the trench to be as smelly, slimy, and unappealing as possible for the big race.

All sports require a degree of lunacy, but bog snorkeling demands a doctorate in it. At least, this is the general explanation for why people have paid a £5 entry fee to take turns putting on mask, snorkel, wetsuit, and fins, descending into the frigid bog water, propelling themselves 60 yards through the muck to the far end of the ditch, turning, and thrashing back—ideally in two minutes or less. The fastest will receive a very small trophy and £40; the slowest will get £5 and a handshake; and everyone will take home a pile of laundry that will have to go three times through the washer.

When I inquire about health concerns, Green points out that upland bogs are acidic enough to kill most bacteria. The water, despite the floating green muck, is safe for swimming—as long as there aren't any dead sheep lying around—and no snorkeler to date has gotten sick. Bradburn claims that the bog has trout and chub, although contestants are more likely to encounter harmless but evil-looking water scorpions. One of these already clings to the start post: a flat, black customer with pincers and a whiplike tail.

“They live off bog snorkelers,” Bradburn says, straight-faced, as he drives the white wooden stake into the bottom of the bog with a sledgehammer. “This is their one meal of the year.”

Bryn Davis, headmaster of the Llanwrtyd Wells elementary school, arrives just when most of the hard work is finished, and is good-naturedly jeered by his friends. He is tall, thin, energetic, with a salt-and-pepper beard—a lovely man, as the Welsh say, with the slightly fanatical Welsh way of looking as if he could talk all night about Welsh history, Welsh rugby, and Welsh male choirs.

Davis and I go to the starting line with soil rakes and begin skimming off the floating grass, weeds, and clumps of nasty-looking green scum. Warming to his task, Bryn sets about telling me the history of bog snorkeling, which turns out to be closely connected to the history of Llanwrtyd Wells, for neither would exist without the water of these hills.

LIKE ALL VENERABLE British inventions, bog snorkeling sprang from a range of diverse influences, chief among them good ale and bad weather. The year was 1976, and Gordon Green, then a production manager at a London ice-cream factory, decided to give up city life and move with his wife and three children to a more pastoral existence in Wales. He bought the Neuadd (that's “Nigh-ath”) Arms, a square, stone Victorian hotel with 20 rooms in Llanwrtyd Wells, and set about fashioning himself an innkeeper. It didn't take him long to realize that the town, with a faltering farming economy, was pretty dead. (The damp Welsh uplands offer poor grazing, forestry and sheep-farming are in decline, and the soil is too acidic for much to grow.) Tourism seemed to be the answer. But what would attract people to a remote area that has its own rugged beauty, typically Welsh weather, and not much else?

Green happened upon the answer one evening four years later, in the Neuadd Arms, when he was arguing over a drink with some farmers about the relative strengths and speeds of man and horse. They decided to put the question to the test, and six months later the first modern Man vs. Horse cross-country footrace was born. (Today, the annual May marathon is so popular that a London bookie offers £22,000 to the man who beats a horse over the length of the 22-mile course; so far none has, though last year the winning runner came within a minute and a half of the slowest steed.) After that, there was no stopping Green. He continued to invent sports, the weirder the better: the Real Ale Ramble (a two-day trek with ale at every checkpoint), Mountain Bike Bog Leaping (a 20-mile cross-country race), and half a dozen more.
Easily the oddest of the lot was bog snorkeling. One night in 1985 a couple of English transplants named Iris and Royston Shrigley were enjoying a pint in the Neuadd Arms, and the conversation got around to their new home. It needed work, Iris said, “but not as much as the garden. That's only fit for bog snorkeling.”

The phrase stuck in Green's mind until a few months later, when Canadian Club whiskey sponsored a contest of eccentric ways to raise money for local charities. On a whim, Green proposed bog snorkeling, which didn't take home first prize (according to Davis, someone sitting in a bath of baked beans in Birmingham won) but did garner a case of whiskey and a pile of T-shirts. This was enough to persuade Green, a good student of history, to turn his strange idea into stranger reality: A once-booming town renowned for its wells would be reborn from those very waters.

Legend has it that in 1732 a pastor in the area, one Theophilus Evans, fell ill with scurvy. He went to the nearby hamlet of Llanwrtyd, where he'd heard there was a sulfur spring called Ffynnon Ddrewllwyd (Welsh for “stinking well”) that was supposed to have curative powers but smelled awful enough to make even a sick man think twice. Seeing a frog jump in, though, the good reverend decided the water couldn't be too toxic, drank it, and was cured. During the Victorian spa boom of the 1890s, a rail line was built up from South Wales, and it wasn't unusual to see hundreds of people swarm off the train and line the path to the well. This continued, more or less, until the 1940s, when the National Health Service was established to provide free medicine for all. The Welsh no longer needed healing waters, and within a few years Llanwrtyd Wells became a virtual ghost town.

Then, in August 1985, the World Bog Snorkelling Championships were born. In its first year, the event drew 20 competitors at £5 per entry; proceeds were donated to the Llanwrtyd Wells Community Center. Since then it has been held every August Bank Holiday—the British equivalent of Labor Day—and has grown steadily in numbers and renown. It has been broadcast on the BBC and countless evening news programs around the world, and has attracted the sponsorship of Ben & Jerry's UK, which kicks in free ice cream—Phish Food is the flavor of the day—as well as the trophy and helpful wooden distance markers. When Manchester submitted a proposal to host the 2000 Summer Olympics, Green wrote to the organizing committee to suggest bog snorkeling as an event. “P'raps that's why they didn't get the bid,” he says wistfully.

And though the sport has retained its primitive glory, its effect on Llanwrtyd Wells has been nothing short of radical. The town of 600-plus now boasts nearly two dozen inns and B&Bs, thanks to this odd vein of tourism. Snorkelers and spectators, only too delighted to have an excuse to spend a weekend hoisting pints in the Welsh countryside, arrive in droves from all over the British Isles and Europe. “There wasn't much else here,” explains former mayor Lesley Keates. “It's no good saying, 'Come here and sunbathe.' I think without the games Green organizes, this town wouldn't be here.”

TORRENTIAL SHOWERS FALL on Sunday, sending water racing down the narrow streets of Llanwrtyd Wells. Just as well: Three years ago the event was canceled because the bog was dry. The competitors have begun to arrive, most of them dismayingly normal-looking. Luckily, the same can't be said for the Irish team. The first to show up—Julia Galvin, 30, a biology teacher from Kerry, and Brian Crossan, 31, a metalwork instructor from Longford—promptly take the town by storm. Within the hour, they are in the pub, leading a multinational team in a pop-music trivia contest.

Not a shy person, Julia bog snorkeled for the first time in the 1999 competition and thereupon declared herself Irish champion, as nobody else from Ireland was present. She became an instant celebrity on national TV and radio and decided to introduce bog snorkeling at home. “We don't have an Olympic-size bog hole in Ireland, so we're lobbying politicians for one,” she avers. “And a stadium. We're going to call it the Stadium of Shite.”
The Irish are the only participants who have actually held trials for today's finals—in a bog hole in the village of Granard in County Longford. Nine people took part, and by late Sunday evening the fastest four have arrived in Llanwrtyd Wells: Julia, Brian, Dave McCormack, and their champion, John Cantillon. At 41, Cantillon is a quiet, cheerful man who is employed in Dublin as a social worker looking after the welfare of gypsies, nowadays called travelers. In his spare time he is a scuba instructor and plays underwater hockey and underwater rugby—both of which enjoy a degree of popularity in Britain that defies reason.

Cantillon is so serious about his underwater sports that he has brought a monofin, a single blue fin that fits over both feet and resembles a manatee's tail. The legality of the monofin is a tricky issue that hasn't come up before, and Green decides he may have to convene the bog-snorkeling committee—that is, anyone who happens to be in the Neuadd Arms bar—to discuss it.

The next morning at breakfast, Julia spots Cantillon in the Neuadd Arms's tidy dining room. “Deep dark bog! Deep dark bog!” they chant together, in between bites of honeyed toast. “It's our mantra,” she explains. Later, Cantillon runs into Gordon Green in the lobby and shows him the monofin.

“I would ban it if I were you,” the Irish champion says sportingly. On behalf of the committee, Green gratefully concurs.

AT LAST, IT IS TIME FOR THE games to begin. By 2 p.m. a couple hundred people have parked by the dirt track, trudged past the Ben & Jerry's van, crossed a single-plank bridge where a stream trickles out of the trench, and arranged themselves amid tussocks of hardrush on the banks of the bog. Standing at the starting line, shuffling his papers and peering over his glasses, Green explains the rules, which are few and suitably primitive.

Contestants will enter the bog one at a time. (This is trickier than it seems, since their numbers bear no relation to the starting order.) They must wear mask and snorkel; fins and wetsuit are optional. They must set off from the starting post, swim the length of the trench propelling themselves only with their legs (because, frankly, there's not enough room in the bog to do much with your arms), round the far post, and swim back. Bryn Davis is in charge of the stopwatch. Ladies may take a break at the far end without time penalty, though it will turn out that taking breaks has less to do with gender and more to do with sheer exhaustion.

Contestant number one, possibly Jeff Stone, thrashes off in an explosion of weedy water, but the bog is a lot longer and heavier than he has thought, and he stops every 20 feet on the return leg, floundering and gasping, kneeling in the bog to get his wind, spitting out his mouthpiece and a volume of stagnant water.

Next up is John Cantillon. His wetsuit reveals that he has thighs like mature anacondas. He dolphins away with such power that he washes both banks with a substantial bow wave, turns at 50 seconds, and shoots past the finish post with the grace of an underwater rugby player scoring a goal. A new world record: 1:39.13, nearly five seconds faster than the existing mark, set in 1997. He grins modestly and then leaves to catch the ferry back to Ireland. He needs to be at work early the next morning, looking after the interests of his travelers.

In honor of the town's history, Julia Galvin has mounted a small green velvet frog in her hair. She repeats her mantra and sets off with the calm dignity of a sea turtle. She has trouble with her mouthpiece and has to keep stopping to cough up peaty water (“Nice girls don't swallow,” she informs the crowd) but records a creditable 3:50.41.

Dave McCormack, a bearded giant and the Irish team driver, goes next and manages a worthy 2:37.31, but then things drop off a little. The next guy crawls out of the far end of the bog and is never seen again. He is followed by snorkeler number 33, who has the promising name of Simon Whale. Whale looks every inch a pro in his new blue wetsuit but ends up with the slowest time of the day, almost four and a half minutes, and has to be hauled out at the finish line to lie giggling and wheezing on the bank.

Fortunately, the volunteer ambulance team—which consists of two middle-aged ladies, one of their sons, and a middle-aged man—is at the ready. The ladies offer Whale water. “Have a swig and wash all that lovely bog out of you,” one counsels. They are assisted by a white terrier named Scrappy, who is wearing his own yellow reflective vest with MEDIC inked on the side.

Andrew Stead, from Australia, is next. He approaches the bog wearing only swimming trunks, mask, snorkel, and fins, having apparently decided to forgo the traditional wetsuit.

“What do I do if his shorts come down?” asks one of the ambulance ladies, sotto voce.

“Send in the dog,” whispers the other.

Aside from Ireland, Australia is the only country to be represented by a national squad, even though this consists only of Stead, a fellow snorkeler, and a four-foot-tall inflatable penguin. “He's our coach,” Stead explains after finishing, trunks intact, in 2:54.15.

Roz Lunn, a professional diving instructor from England, has the power and the breath control but loses time because she keeps plowing into the banks. “I couldn't see a thing,” she says, panting at the finish (2:43.22). “It was like swimming through gravy.” Strange wriggling trails like snake tracks appear in the bog: small fish, driven to the surface by the underwater mayhem.

Despite such challenges, the back of the pack shows a final flourish of class. Brian Crossan, who has as hairy a pair of feet as I've ever seen on a man, manages a good enough time to be Team Ireland's number-two finisher. Craig Napper of South Wales, champion two years back, swims 1:42.28 to finish second, and Gemma Davies, also from South Wales, wins the women's prize with an impressive 1:55.32.

By 5 p.m., it's all over. The last snorkeler has crawled out of the bog, and the crowd has thinned appreciably, as anyone with any sense has headed off across the field in search of a towel, a shower, or a drink. Green, warning everyone that “I could easily have made a mistake,” reads the results, surrounded by dozens of wet, smelly, mud-streaked, weed-festooned lunatics. Simon Whale unaccountably fails to show up to claim his Slowest Time award. Julia, as president of the Irish Bog Snorkeling Association, accepts John's £40 and the winner's silver cup. A small boy has caught a ten-inch trout in the bog and put it in a bucket, and he is showing it to anyone who will look.

The water of Waen Rhydd, originally resembling a badly corked Chablis, is now the color and consistency of brown paint. There is little distinction between the bog and the bank, where the wet grass has been trampled flat and even the spectators are floundering in the mud. A kind of retro-evolution is taking place, and civilized humans are turning back into amphibians. At least for now, the bog has won.

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