These nice tire tracks look cool but represented a horror. Well-defined tracks = soft mud = difficult pushing or pulling of a handcart. The tires had been making tracks like these for a while (and sometimes they were worse), forcing me to exert extra effort in pushing the cart along.

What the picture doesn’t show is another unwelcome feature: wet, slippery mud. Ironically, the mud slowed down the handcart, requiring more pushing effort, and at the same time its slipperiness robbed me of traction I needed to push harder.

At this point I was about ready to give up, but I thought I’d give it one more chance by walking ahead without the handcart to have a look. The moist spots got larger and more frequent. There was no way to get around them. The hike was doomed, so I returned to the car.

If I had explored farther the previous evening, I would have discovered this nightmare of mud and canceled the handcart hike. That would have saved me a lot of effort.