Word: mudding
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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...
...Brookfield, the chairman of the board of selectmen is Dairy Farmer Charles Keeler. His phone is still listed. Standing in his barnyard, a seasonal bog, he says, "You can plow snow, but not mud. There's not much you can do about mud except wait for it to go away. The only thing to do is add gravel-18 inches is a pretty good surface-but mud season occurs before the town gravel pit melts...
...Mud season is an unpredictable phenomenon, different every year. Explains Earl Bassett, who is visiting the Keeler farm on business: "There are always spots you don't anticipate. You just drop in, and the wheels aren't touching bottom any more, and you sit there until someone pulls you out." Bassett qualifies as an expert since he drives 42,000 miles a year. His business is artificially inseminating cows. Even the cows must be able to spot his license plate: TORO...
...sound a vehicle makes as it drops into the mud is a kind of ominous smush. Some people find it so depressing that they try to avoid mud season altogether. Jackie and Al Wilder, who run the Fork Shop Restaurant in Brookfield, closed up in March and went all the way to Europe. "Nobody can get to us over the mud anyway," says Al. They came home expecting tulips and sunshine and found instead all the pipes in their house frozen. It's not nice to avoid Mother Nature...