Finding Magic in Mud Season

In some parts of the country, I hear tell that they have this lovely time of year that begins about nowish, and continues for several wonderful months. It is called Spring. It sounds magical indeed. It is full of buds and birds and bunnies and sunshine, and smells like hay and gardenias and coconut-flavored sun block. The name even sounds good. Spring. Spring to life. spring with joy. It is vibrant, energetic, and wholesome. It is warm and welcoming. It is polite to old ladies and never mistreats animals. It probably dotes on its mother.

Spring. Sprrrrrring!

We, alas, don’t have anything like that in New England. Instead, the transition that sees us through from “sweet jezum criminy it’s cold enough to freeze your hoo-ha off”  to  “ooh, lilacs!” is interminable and awkward and ungainly. It has all the grace and beauty of a dump truck splashing down rutted roads. It has all the charm of gnats gnashing, black flies biting, and chilling dampness seeping into your core. It has all the romance of wet socks. If I could personify it, it would be me at thirteen: braces, bad skin, ill-fitting clothes, and an inexplicably truculent attitude towards the world. We don’t have “spring” here. What we have is a season that warrants a different name, but one that like spring, reflects itself perfectly.

We have mud season.

Mud.

As in: thud. As in: bugs and floods, and crud. Rhymes with splud, which is the sound your shoes make between February and May. Splud: like tires slapping and sloshing down a dirt road. Splud: like wet snow jamming up a blower. It is the sound that fills the dreary cavity between winter and summer.

Looks like we got a good harvest, fellas.

The crocuses that were brave enough to start sprouting in mid March were crushed under one last (surprise!) dumping of snow that landed like a wet blanket. It was so slushy that throughout the land you could hear strains of that old favorite classic coming off peoples' lips: Oh splashing through the snow…

Our cars, our coats, our floors and our dog have been pretty much wearing the driveway since early March, because no matter how hard I scrub, a sickly brown tinge coats our entire lives. Five days ago, it was seventy-two degrees and gorgeous out, and then four days ago it dropped back down to twenty and we had to fish out our heavy sweaters all over again and turn the heat back on.  (Well, okay, I lied about the heat bit, but Gina made me build a fire in the woodstove.) It is the time of year when the snow finally melts but the earth hasn’t come back to life yet and the world is just wet and brown. Insert imagery here. All things considered, I would just as soon fast forward straight through from Lincoln’s birthday to Memorial Day.

           

 But! Here is where I proceed to have to eat my words because sure enough, just as I was hunkering down for another soggy and joyless slog through to summer, I’ll be a ribald peahen if old mother nature didn’t bust a new move on me. Out of nowhere, I was blindsided. I admit it, I got schooled.

            

We were up at “the farm” which is shorthand for Road's End Farm which is shorthand for one of the most awesome places on this planet.  I am fortunate enough to have stumbled upon the farm because I had the good sense to marry Gina and visitation rights are part of her dowry.  She was a camper there, then a counselor, then lived there for many years and we go back and visit regularly. In point of fact, we went up to visit just the weekend before last.

            

Our schedule while up there pretty much falls into a familiar routine. We wake up and Gina goes up to the barn to do chores, while I stay inside and, erm,  “write.” After an hour or so, I head up to the barn where, if my timing is right, feeding will be over and so there’s little left for me to do but awkwardly pat the remaining stragglers and let them stare back at me with kind pity in their eyes.  Or, as Gina puts it, I prance around with the horses and look cute.

I Love it When Gina Takes Me to Road’s End Farm!

On the Sunday of our last visit, the weather was typical for late March which is to say we could see our breath but not quite feel our fingers. It was cold. Not cold like dead of winter cold, but cold enough that snow still lay on the ground and icicles hung from the roof and the few foolhardy plants who had tried to sprout and flower were seriously rethinking the wisdom of their decision. After chores were over, Alicia, who runs the place with Tom, suggested we walk down to fetch the paper. Their mailbox is, like, a third of a mile down the road, so it was not just a stroll to the end of the driveway. It was a legitimate jaunt. Not that that’s super important, but I’m trying to set the scene here.

Despite the temperature, the sun was out, and the sky was that beautiful deep monochromatic blue that Crayola could just never do justice to when I’d try to recreate it as a kid with magic markers. The horses, fat and happy, were back out in the pastures. They composed our backdrop since their pasture extends along the side of the road for a long while. 

Road’s End Farm at a more temperate time (with dog for scale)

The deep rutted trenches of the road were more or less frozen and so we could stumble freely over the ridges rather than wade through the gulches. I don’t remember what the conversation was about, but it was pleasant. It involved laughter, mirth, that sort of thing. And then Alicia stopped in mid-sentence and also in mid-stride, directly below a low hanging branch. In the crook of a twig and branch, we could see an icicle had begun to form. More of a web than a sickle. A broken end of a twig hung down, and she stretched up to reach it. Finally getting purchase, she lowered it until she could free the icy web from the tree’s twiggy clutches.

Gina and I, and our friend Harriet, who was visiting too, didn’t think much of it. Alicia is a great person, and just the sort of soul who might free trees from random and menacing looking ice clumps. We began walking again. Alicia offered Harriet the ice chunk that she now held in her hand.

Harriet looked skeptical. What, your icicle? I’ve had icicles before. No thanks.

That’s when Alicia explained it to us simple suburban creatures as gently as she could and with small words: It’s frozen maple. 

Say what?

            

We all took a slurp. She was right. A gentle taste of maple flavored the misshapen icicle. It was subtle. It was smooth. It was amazing.

I know about maple sap. Sure I do. I even boiled it down once with my family when I was five. I don’t remember much about that episode except I was incredibly bored the entire time and I don’t think my palate was really ready for the exotic taste of syrup because after waiting an eon for it to be ready, I didn’t even like it. I have since come around on the matter. I have used a straw to surreptitiously suck liquid sap out of a tap bucket. I have bought maple sodas flavored with actual sap. But I have never before in my entire life on earth experienced a maplecicle. I mean, it was an icicle. But maple flavored. Stunningly obvious and at the same time completely mind-blowing.

How did I not know about maplecicles until now? Because they are not processed or packaged and sexy? Because they haven’t been commercialized yet? Because they just exist in a pure state of unassuming modesty that makes them easy to miss? Because I just never thought to even think they might even exist at all until now?  Maple icicles form when the tree has a small wound somewhere in a twig or a branch. I like how Alicia puts it. She says they form when maples weep. 

It’s not super common that the conditions are right for it. Or maybe it is, but they look a lot like ordinary icicles and frozen chunks of water, and in a frozen landscape, they are easy to overlook. I should know. I have overlooked them for thirty-three years.  But then Alicia showed us, and suddenly, my world grew just a little bit. Because there I was, sucking on a bit of maple flavored ice in a magical land that once was Gina's experience and Gina's memories,  and Gina's world but now is ours together. Our experiences, our stories, our friends. And our maple icicle moments.

It is magic.  No, it is better than magic because it is not an illusion, it is real.

It is not the size of the moment. It is the wonder of discovery.