Word: mudding
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...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...
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...
...eradicate the leftists. Though he has lately tried to moderate his image, some Salvadorans seem to be taking his tough talk at face value. Workers who regularly count the bodies dumped along the roadsides report that political murders have increased some 20% since the elections. And in the tiny mud-hut hamlet of Barrios last week, survivors of an alleged Sunday-morning massacre told reporters that 48 fellow villagers, more than half of them less than twelve years old, had been killed by Salvadoran soldiers in search of guerrillas...