Mud Season / The Trouble with Mud

Flatlanders, that is people who don't live in Vermont... uh, or people who moved to Vermont at some point in their lifetime, might not know much about the many seasons of the Green mountain State.

We have the four regular ones, and then we have a series of less publicized, yet highly important sub-seasons that mark life here.

For instance, between fall's colors (full of white license plates on the highways), and winter's white blanket, (we will take a look at the seasons of winter at some other point) we have stick season (when all of the hardwood trees in the state look like sticks).

Right now, due to a series of unseasonably warm days, The Green mountain State is quickly advancing towards Mud Season. Well, at least in the unpaved reaches, we are. Burlington never really sees Mud Season. The Frost is leaving the ground, and as it melts, all of the ice crystals turn to soup. Cars and trucks steer for themselves across the soggy, rutted byways. Chidrens' shoes are converted from insulated to waterproof, and they are kept strictly by the door if possible.

"Never mind that hat, Jimmy," mom might call out, "it'll be warm today." (42 degrees is warm after winter here)

A warm southerly wind really adds to the trouble with mud when it melts the rain soaked snowpack even faster than the sun's bright rays. That breeze can send a torrent of melt water down the hills. It will face challenges of still-frozen culverts, and ditches full of ice, then escape from the lowlands across your lawn. Formerly firm grass turns to a sponge waiting for the first toddler's knee, or dog foot to soak. If that runoff meets soil, barren of greenery, it waits for the slightest traffic to escape gravity's constraints and move indoors  attached to even the smallest heel, or dragging pant hem (damn my short legs).

Indoors, the soil smears into the cracks between the dry floorboards, across linoleum, or stains carpets. (This is one of many times that I am happy we do not have North Carolina's red clay). Every time the lab comes back inside from barking at the neighbors, my house (and poor sofa) looks like wreck again.A friend of mine just takes up the area rugs and refuses to wash the floor more than once a week. There is wisdom in that.

It is Mud Season, after all.

The rest of the state is muddy, perhaps I can embrace it in my home as well.