In Vermont: Mind over Mud

"I remember a few years back, over on Tadmere Hill," recalls John Mach, patriarch of Pawlet, a town in southwest Vermont. "I was going along and I saw a hat in the road. I bent over and picked it up, and there was my old friend Henry Wheeler up to his neck in mud. So I said, 'Henry! Can I help you in any way?' And he said, 'No, that's all right, John. I've still got a horse under me.' "

This tale, oft told, always with a perfectly straight face, moves north each year with the melt. It is as much a harbinger of spring as a robin. Mud season is not winter and not quite spring. It is something in between, a few weeks transcending transition to become a season in itself. First comes a slow drip. Then a tentative trickle. Then the melt begins in earnest: a rush, a gurgle, a cascade. The earth squirts, muck and mire suck at boots, downhill becomes a torrent, uphill becomes a bog. Snowbanks dissolve, flowing over ground already saturated. The frost comes out of the earth, and a normally flat, hard roadbed melts into mud three feet and four feet deep.

The water runs off under roots, around rocks, channeling down the dirt roads, washing away culverts and shoulders and gravel. At night it freezes again, heaving the roadbed up into ridges like a freshly plowed field. By dawn the ground is reglazed with ice. With the sun the gurgle and tumble start anew. The soil undulates, like a waterbed.

To Vermonters, mud season is mystical and inscrutable, a time to celebrate survival and renewal, even as they curse the ooze underfoot. It is a time to kayak on flooded rivers, to boil maple sap, to do some spring cleaning (Vermonters say, with reason, "I'm going to hoe out my house"). It is a time to stand outside in fresh air hinting of the grass and lilacs to come, and to be hugely entertained by the sight of neighbors and innocent strangers dealing with the mud.

"People drive up to a big mudhole and they are filled with awe. They get so excited they don't know what to do," says Mach. "They blow their horn hoping the mud will go away. When it doesn't, after a while they back up about ten yards to get a running start. Well, the mud might be a foot deep and the ruts two feet deep. Their wheels get cross-rutted, and the mud just drags off their muffler and shoots them across the road into the bushes. It's very interesting to see people scratch their heads and try to figure it out. Some just abandon their cars and start walking. Especially if they are in the mud over the door handles."