This article was originally published in The Bridge, Montpelier, VT
Sugaring season in Vermont is the start of the fluid run. The temperature is just perfect for the sap, the blood of a tree, to start running through the trees veins. Boiled down we get Vermont gold – Maple syrup. But everything starts to run at the same time here. Hormones in animals and humans start running in what can only kindly be called the ‘spring rut’. Water starts to run, pouring off the mountains in rivulets and streams, that gather momentum as they flow. Patches of farmland and yard start to appear daily, swamps reappear, buried detritus in the yard is found. This season, of the reawakened spring forces has another name, unique to Vermont from all the rest of the world. It is called Mud Season.
Unless you have actually experienced this season first hand, you would not believe the extreme situations at hand. It is nearly impossible to describe to an outsider what it is like. I have lived and traveled all over the world. Driven on some of the most dangerous roads, including the mountainous pass from Coroico to La Paz in Bolivia, the Going to the Sun highway in Glacier National Park, unnamed cliffy precipices of Cyprus, Greece. And never, never, never – not in whiteout snowstorms on mountain passes, washed out flooded roads in low lying fields, windstorms across the plains, ruts on forest service roads – never, anywhere in the world, have I encountered worse roads than the dirt roads of Vermont during Mud Season.
It is also a feature of some local pride here. During the weeks leading up to the worst of it, when the ice and snow are gone, and the soft, tire skewing slurries are just starting to appear in the hardest hit areas, Mud Season is on everyone’s mind. It is with no small measure of glee that everyone you see – at the post office, the library, the grocery store, walking the dog – everyone will eventually bring the conversation around to the mud. Although on some level we all dread this Vermont rite of passage, we also measure our metal by our forbearance and ability to navigate what could only be called A Perfect Storm of road degradation.
My neighbor Kate told me she lost two cars to the roads here. “The bottoms of the cars were simply scraped off,” she said. The ruts that the tires were forced into, were too low for her car to skim. “Finally, I had to get this beast,” she said, indicating the SUV behind her.
“I had to get all four tires taken off and pressure hosed of all the mud,” another neighbor told me. “It was packed in solid, the car was like running on square tires. Boom, creak, boom creak,” he mimicked the sound of the tires turning when he got onto hard pavement.
The school buses stop running up our dirt roads for several weeks and parents are forced to navigate on foot or in their own vehicles to the dropping off point at the confluence of dirt and pavement to get their kids.
Jane told me the story of her husband sliding sideways down the road for several hundred feet, unable to stop. He now takes the long way around to work for that month.
What happens is this: The snow melts from above, and the moisture in the compacted dirt also melts from below. The deeper, frozen layers of earth keep the water from draining forcing the water into a relatively small area. The huge drifts on the side of the roads also melt pushing their moisture into the warmer roadbed. This compacted dirt is now layered with water, and the pressure of the cars passing overhead causes the mud to further compact. It begins to ooze, and ruts are made. These ruts deepen, and become unavoidable. The mud, because of the density of the dirt on the road, acts like a suction, and pulls and heaves the cars around on the road into no discernable pattern. Steering becomes almost impossible as the direction the tires are facing has little to do with the direction the completely gelatinous surface is forcing you to go. In some areas momentum is needed to ascend a hill, but the mud often forces you off course. Braking is not always an option, for the same reason that steering is not always an option. Speed is most often your enemy here, as the slower you go, the more likelihood you have of remaining on the roadbed. If there is another car coming toward you, you pull as far over to the side as is possible. Dog walkers remove themselves completely to the slushy shoulders. Your best allies in navigation are prayer and faith.
Every few years the road crews try to solve the problem. They dig up the roadbed, layer drainage rock, pea gravel, drainage mats, and compact dirt on top. This usually helps mitigate the problem for a year or two, until the oppressive weight of water in the mud becomes too much for the mats to absorb.
There is still, though, much objection to paving the roads, because of the continued widespread use of horses, cows and tractors, and the slower speeds that dirt roads require. And because, as I mentioned earlier, the pride Vermonters take in being able to navigate the worst roads in the world.
So spring comes. The sugaring houses are fired up the and the sweet smell of boiling sap fills the air. Songbirds once again awaken you in the morning, and the sunrises glow with a fervor, a honeyed yellow they didn’t possess mere weeks ago. The sheep are ready to lamb, and goats to kid. The honey bees are starting to venture out of their hives for their cleaning flights. And we all start emerging from our winter cocoons, talking about how much wood we burned, how long our longest blackout was, who lost a barn roof from the heavy snowfalls. We all tell our favorite mud season story, and curse about how horrific our roads are, and can you even believe it?
But we’re all pretty happy underneath. We made it through another winter. We live in a blessed little kingdom on earth. And we’re full of the hope of spring. And waiting, patiently, for dust season.
