Mudding

Mudding

Other names	Playing in mud, finding mud
Health risk	Moderate
Legal risk	Moderate

Mudding is the practice of playing in large outdoor bodies of mud or silt for erotic, aesthetic, psychological or somatosensory stimulation.

Background

Mudding is a practical application of Gunge play. It has been practiced by members of the wider kink community, but can occur without prior individual contact to a wider kink scene or subculture. Practitioners may seek out sites from a great distance or act on their own initiative if an suitable site is nearby.

Appeal

This activity shares many of the same physical sensations as Gunge play and many of the same motivations: enjoying the texture, smell, or temperature of being covered in a wet, slimy, gooey, sticky, or otherwise messy substance - however the outdoor environment may reference motivations of Exhibitionism, namely an excitement derived from the fear or anticipation of being caught or witnessed by others. The appeal of playing in very large quantities of a messy substance can easily be derived by most Gunge play enthusiasts, eg. thoughts of losing oneself into a substance without a solid object or hand-hold to anchor oneself from.

The specific appeal of a large pool of mud can be explained practically; it can be hard to afford the supplies needed to set up a gunge scene of a certain size, or to find the space or location needed for such an activity. Pools of mud are cheap, often accessible, often abundant in society, and may often occur in locations secluded enough for practitioners to feel comfortable engaging in sexual activities.

Methods

A common way to search for muddy sites is to use satellite imagery services such as Google Maps.

Using these, quarries, gravel washing facilities, open pit mines, and other industries which process earth may be indicated by a certain yellow-orange colour visible even when zoomed out to the scale of cities.

Other popular sites include rivers, estuaries, lowland marshes, lakes, and swamps.

The best seasons for finding suitable natural mud sites are spring and autumn, when the ground has not been frozen or baked hard. Areas which are normally flooded may become accessible over summer as the water level lowers, places with year round water may have very deep, "bottomless" mud when partially drained due to the depth of undisturbed silt at the bottom. In contrast, muddy spots which only get wet from rainwater tend not to accumulate massive amounts of mud and may quickly bottom out into a harder layer below. Seasonal rainwater mud sites can also dry out more frequently, which can lead to a hardening or separation of the mud from water and cause quicksand-like effects.

A consistent way to find suitable mud sites throughout the year is to utilise settling ponds, also known as settling pools, sedimentation basins, settlement lagoons, etc. These are bodies of water where wet mud and other waste is deposited to settle over time, eventually filling the pool until another one needs to be built. They are typically oblong and fill in from one side. Mud from these sources has been described as "like silicone lube", often composed of extremely fine and consistently sized particles suspended in the water.

Risks

Quicksand

Contrary to popular belief, quicksand is not normally a cause of danger by itself. The human body is almost always more buoyant than mud and is typically able be escaped from when a person is stuck. To escape, one should lie backwards to spread their weight more evenly, allowing oneself to float. Slowly wiggling one's feet and legs in circles will loosen the mud around them and allow water to enter those cavities, which can help one pull oneself out by resolving suction forces. Care should be taken not to pull frantically as this will increase exhaustion and can cause pulled muscles or similar injuries.

Quicksand can easily slow one's traversal of an area to an unplanned degree. As such the main dangers from quicksand are when in combination with other risks in this section, notably tides and cold exposure.

Tides

Various mud sites are susceptible to tides which can pose a substantial risk to human health. Tides can rise meters over hours. Worldwide, tides are a major contributor to deaths by drowning every year. It is inadvisable to enter a tidal mud flat at low tide without exceptional precautions.

Tides do not only occur at the sea, lakes can have tides. Tides can also sweep far up wide rivers, in some circumstances tidal bores can raise the water level of a susceptible area by tens of centimetres in a single wave.

Cold Exposure

Water can transfer heat 25 times faster than air. When the human body is submerged in it, the internal temperature can be drastically cooled by a lower ambient value in a very short timeframe. This can affect planning - for instance if a practitioner travels a long way through relatively cold mud before fully submerging themselves, the return trip will be significantly harder to navigate due to the cold. In turn this can lengthen their exposure to the cold. Similarly, heavy quicksand-like mud can further lengthen their exposure time and prove exhausting to navigate. These effects can snowball into dangerous situations if no care has been taken to plan ahead around the environment.

pH Levels and Pollution

Certain mud can occasionally be very alkaline. In nature barefoot revellers at Burning Man regularly suffer Playa Foot - a chemical burn caused by extended skin exposure to the dust of the Black Rock Desert. In artificial environments like settling ponds and other muddy areas on industrial sites, waste product may come from a variety of other industries which can be caustic enough to chemically burn human skin.

In the particular case of mine tailings pools, toxic chemicals may be used to extract ores or encourage flocculation (settling) before being dumped. Pools from mines can contain heavy metals such as Lead and Arsenic, carcinogens like Polychlorinated Biphenyls (AKA: PCBs), and other unknown chemicals used for processing depending on the source of the pool.

In the case of agricultural pollution in natural aquatic environments from nitrates and phosphates, certain kinds of algal bloom (cyanobacteria et al.) have been found to be toxic to humans. It is not possible to tell by sight if an algal bloom is composed of cyanobacteria without testing the water directly for cyanotoxin. Unless you are positive this is not the case, algal blooms should be physically avoided.

Infection Risks

Mud can host parasites, viruses, and bacteria dangerous to humans. In nature the presence of these can be indicated by agricultural runoff (nitrates, phosphates, fertiliser, animal manure) or particularly stagnant or stinking water. Typically this might smell like rotting fish, animal decomposition, feces, or rotten eggs. Watch for signs like dead fish or insects, or an incandescent "biofilm" on the surface of still water.