Mudding Stories

In college, I signed up for an introductory marine biology course, mostly for the credits and the field trips that got us out of the lecture hall. Every week we'd load onto a van and head to the coast—beaches, harbors, tidal pools—notebooks in hand, collecting samples and trying to act like serious scientists. One morning in early July, the professor announced our destination: a massive back bay, thousands of acres of tid...

My name is Cynthia, but I go by Cindy. I'm sixteen, blonde, and have never been much of a country girl, even though I live in Tennessee. But my girlfriends all love country music and go to a lot of parties with guys who think they're "cowboys" and call themselves "rednecks" on purpose. It took them a while to convince me to come hang out with them, but I finally agreed last Saturday when I had nothing else to do. Amy pick...