Our Fifth Season Persists!

Mud season usually doesn't last very long, two or three weeks, at most, but while it's here, it can be a real bear to deal with. We are now heading into our second week of dealing with mud. Last week wasn't too bad, this week is much worse and some towns, like Barnet, are just telling their citizens they are on their own because anything town road crews try to do to help  just maks things worse. Like, dumping material into mudbogs. The expensive material (crushed rock or gravel) gets swallowed up by the voracious bog and town trucks  create ever deeper craters for unsuspecting smaller vehicles to slip into.  It's downright embarrassing when a town truck gets stuck in the mud, but it happens.

Folks who are used to back roads in Vermont, never leave home unprepared. In winter, my father always had a set of chains, a box of sand he'd filled up at the town garage, and at least one shovel. And that was for his 4-wheel drive Scout. I'm not that prepared - I just stay home if the roads are really icy or snowy, but he and my mother had to get to work every day, like lots of other folks. However, come mud season, none of that really helped if you got stuck. When roads were that bad, we went out early in the morning when the ground was frozen, and made plans to leave our vehicle on the "other side" of the mud and either walk the rest of the way home, or, if plans were made ahead of time, someone would meet us on the opposite"other side" of the mud and we'd only have to walk a mile or so along the muddy part to firmer ground on the other side, and a ride home. 

Walking on these muddy roads can be pretty hazardous, too. It's really difficult to find solid ground, and anyone can imagine what happens if you slip into one of those deep muddy furrows. The mud seems to grab your feet and you can end up shoeless, or worse. Not a pretty sight.

This week I decided I'd better have some emergency equipment with me, just in case. So I have my barn boots, a warm jacket and gloves stashed in the car, and of course I try to remember to take my cell phone with me. Just in case I misjudge and slide off when I'm "riding the ridges" and end up mired in mud and have to abandon the car and walk home. I went into town Monday morning and thought I wouldn't go out again this week, but yesterday the Cabot road crew did some work on some of the really bad spots and even had the big road machine here to level it and try to round up the mud to help the road dry out. So, when oldest son, Bill, asked me to join him and his two brothers for lunch today, I said sure. The spots that had been worked on yesterday were better today, but further down the road, on the flat beginning about at Craige's all the way to the Cabot/Danville town line is still pretty bad, but navigable. And Danville's end is just beginning to get nasty. It isn't worth pounding my car over if I don't absolutely have to, so I'll stay off the road for a while.

We are hearing reports that this is the worst mud season in 25 years, and that is probably true. Jamie was remembering today about the flat-bed truck with a farm tractor on it that got stuck one year, probably in the early 2000s, just past his turn. They unloaded the farm tractor and apparently it got stuck, and when someone (perhaps the town truck) tried to get it out, and pulled an axle off it, so when Jamie came home there was half a farm tractor sitting at the end of his road. I remember when that happened, and I believe it was quite a while before the parts of the tractor were reunited and it was hauled away.

All part of living on a back road in Vermont during Mud Season!