Word: mud
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
...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...
Central Vermont is enjoying the precise mid-stage of mud season. In Montpelier, the nation's smallest state capital, Nona Estrin says, "We've finished watching the snow melt, and we are about to begin watching the mud dry. Both are bona fide full-time activities. You may have a full-time job, but watching spring come is the romance in your life." An administrator with the state senior citizens program, she has been up since 5 a.m.: "I don't want to miss a moment, there is so much going on at this time of year...
...vernal incantation. "In Vermont we have seven months of winter and five months of damn poor sledding." Hill, sporting a T shirt with the motto OLD POSTMEN NEVER DIE, THEY JUST LOSE THEIR ZIP, drives 63 miles a day on his rural delivery route. Detours add five miles in mud season. "I've had to jack myself out two or three times this year," he says. "The trick is to get under the car with this thing called a handyman jack, get it up three or four feet and then swing the car sideways onto solid ground...