ABSTRACT
One summer in the 1950s, in upstate New York, a boy named Lucian and his parents stayed in a house on a hill above a large swamp, known only as “the Bog.” From the first day, there were parental warnings, “Stay away from the Bog.” When the boy asked why, the response was always, “The Bog is a dangerous place.” And, when he responded with yet another “why,” his father's answer was something like, “It is easy to go down to the Bog and it is easy to get in there but it is hard to get out of the Bog. Many a little boy has been lost in that swamp.” Of course, on his first opportunity, tempted by the chorus of bullfrogs, Lucian went down the gently sloping hill to explore the Bog. No “Posted: No Trespassing” or “Keep Out” signs greeted him. Unwisely, he chose the late afternoon to scout the swamp and, true to the warnings, he got lost. The rapid descent of darkness, compounded by an immediate loss of direction, led to a nasty couple of hours during which he was forced to tromp through mud until he found his way out. Once the boy came home muddy, covered with mosquito bites, and the stink of skunk cabbage in his nose, he had learned a bit about places where it is easy to enter but difficult to exit. He had also learned a thing or two about warnings.
