Tis the season to be muddy ~ April 6, 1995

by David Heiller

This time of year, it’s hard to see beauty, when all you see is mud. Ten days ago people were raking their lawns and burning their fields. Roads were drying. Mud was disappearing. Peony shoots and crocuses were popping up.

Then Mother Nature dumped a foot of snow on us on Monday, March 27. At first it was fun, seeing all that snow. Some people saw the bright side. Maurice Bennett told me that the ground could use that extra moisture.

But the fun wore off. It didn’t take long, maybe 10 minutes. And now, after a week of slow melting, it’s mud season again.

Oh, mud.

Mud season. The floors need constant mopping. And as soon as you mop it, the dog sneaks in and leaves a fresh set of tracks.

Rugs get caked from wiping your feet. You could go mud-bogging on our rugs. Then they dry and you’ve got a gravel pit instead of a mud pit. You give the rug a good shake, and get sandblasted by grit.

There’s mud on the carpet, mud on the car seat, mud in the bathtub. You almost wear a safety line riding the tractor to the woods, hoping that you don’t get stuck, and that if you do, some hero on a horse will come along and pull you out before you disappear like a jungle explorer in quick sand.

I’ve only been stuck with the tractor one time this year. I made it through a stretch of craters, and was looking back with a proud smile when the front of the tractor found the biggest hole of all, about 18 inches deep.

Boom. We stopped with a jolt. I jacked the front end up, and shoved two two-by-sixes under the front wheels. Then I crawled out, and cut a new trail to the woods.

(You may think I deserve to get stuck, driving a tractor in the woods this time of year. Try hauling 600 gallons of sap a quarter mile by hand, and you’ll take your chances too.)

Last week my wife and I and our daughter were out in the woods collecting maple sap. Malika, age nine, headed home ahead of us. Then we heard her yell for help.

I knew immediately that she was stuck. It was just a little black spot on the grassy trail, but it was enough. She looked like a tar baby. First one foot had been sucked in, then when she tried to gain some purchase to pull it out, the other had followed suit. The La Brea Tar Pit couldn’t have held her any tighter. Mollie almost ended up alongside mastodons, bison, camels, and the giant ground sloth, which she sometimes resembles when it comes time to clean her room.

Rescuing Malika from the mud. 
Sometimes mud just gets the best of us.

I laughed and grabbed her around the chest and tried to lift her out. She didn’t budge. I squatted down like a weight lifter and pull again, using my legs and keeping my back straight. I can pull posts out of the ground with this stance. But I couldn’t move Mollie.

I did start to hear some of her muscles ping and pop. That’s when I stopped. I’m no King Solomon.

She stepped out of her boots, and I held her while Cindy worked the boots free. It took a while. Then Mollie put her boots back on and we made our way home.

I could go on about the mud, but what’s the point? And it could be worse. In California, whole mountains turn into mud and slide into the ocean.

Let’s just hope for some dry weather. No more 12-inch snow storms.

As Tennessee Ernie Ford once sang: “Some people say a man is made out of mud.”

He was right.