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While writing this several weeks ago, I heard the local weather person reporting we were to have warmer temperatures, with snow changing to sleet and rain to follow. Although it is said that April showers bring May flowers, we all know that March brings us mud.
This year spring will officially begin with the vernal equinox on March 20, however that first day of spring and the first spring day could be up to a month apart.
In 1926, Mark Twain wrote the poem, "Two Tramps in Mud Time."
"The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
a cloud comes over the sunlit arch
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March."
This is the time of year when people that chose to dwell in homes located off the beaten path pay dearly for their privacy.
During the winter months, snow can be plowed, allowing the roads to remain open. However the mud of spring can swallow a vehicle, making travel almost impossible.
Normally, soil has approximately 50% percent voids that are air space. The weight of vehicles passing over a road day after day does pack down the soil, and this packed-down soil can be as hazardous as driving on ice.
Our Old English word for mud was fen, which was replaced in the Middle English period by mud, coming from the Middle Low German word muddle, going back to the prehistoric base meu or mu. Fen now survives only as the word swamp.
In Webster's dictionary, mud is described as wet, sticky earth; also, mud can mean confused or stupid. We've all heard the saying "His name is mud" when someone gets in trouble.
When examining a clod of mud under a microscope, you will find that it is alive with copepods — a nearly transparent crustacean that is smaller than a grain of rice — swimming around in the mud. After these little creatures breed, they can be seen carrying egg sacks on their backs, from which dragonfly larva will hatch out within a month.
During April, leeches will appear in this clod of mud and even after a longer period, many more strange creatures could also be found. Perhaps you are asking, "Where did they all come from?" Well, the drought resistant eggs laid in the drying earth of summer are simply waiting for the mud of spring.
Some of our wildlife need mud. For example, the robin and barn swallow build their nests partially of mud, and the mud dauber wasp builds its nest completely of mud.
If no mud is available, wildlife must make their own by mixing dirt with either water or saliva.
I'm sure we have all been heard to sarcastically say, "It's mud season." Perhaps, most of us believe that mud is just an inconvenience, but mud is a complex, changing medium. Without a doubt, city and town dwellers do not pay as much attention to mud as country folk.
On a typical spring morning, country folk go outside only to find the mud frozen. Those who live on dirt roads find the ride to work on roads, with frozen deep ruts, a bone-jarring experience. On the return trip home, in the evening, these same drivers find the bottom has fallen out of the roads, with their vehicles going from one rut to the next. At times, the driver hears the bottom of the car scraping the ground or a stone and instantly knows that if the gas pedal is disengaged, the car will become stuck in the quagmire.
I wish I could say that the following tale only happened once, but getting stuck in the mud had happened many times when I was a game protector. Having a vehicle stuck in the snow is a bad dream, however to get a vehicle stuck in the mud is a nightmare.
The more the wheels spin, the deeper the vehicle becomes stuck; the more you dig, the more water and dirt flow in. When jacking up a vehicle that is mired in mud you quickly learn that instead of the vehicle going up, the jack sinks slowly into the mud and out of sight.
Even when stones carried from nearby fields or woods are used to get a hard surface for the tires, the ground seems to swallow the rocks.
My patience has long worn thin, and I'm really upset for doing such a dumb thing as getting off the hardtop road.
My only choice left is to walk up the road to a farmhouse, where a very large, untied dog is announcing my arrival. The dog looks as if it might bite, and much care is taken on my part to make sure the dog stays in front of me. A lady comes to the door and tells me that her husband is in the barn and off I go to the barn. After hearing my predicament, the farmer, with a grin on his face, says that he'll meet me at the vehicle with his tractor.
The farmer hooked a chain from the tractor to the vehicle, and with a gentle tug, the vehicle was back on the road. Although not one farmer ever said it, I knew they were thinking, "You city slickers ought to stay off these back roads until the mud dries up."
Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.