Mud season

Ah, mud season! An unpaved road can bury you axle deep in ruts if you forget about this time of year and make a wrong turn.

I made this mistake a few years ago driving through a remote section of state forest in the northern Berkshires and ended up hiking out to find someone with a truck and a chain to free my car from the clinging muck. When I was growing up in Dutchess County, N.Y., there were local roads that were impassible to anything less than a farm tractor when the mud was thick.

This is a time of transition, when daylight temperatures are warm enough to melt the surface snow yet leave the ground frozen beneath. This creates the conditions for spring skiing, for maple sap to run and mud to form. Anyone who has been tempted to do any yard work during the recent warm spell quickly encountered a morass in the grass.

Some of our native flora have adapted marvelously to these freeze-thaw conditions. The lowly skunk cabbage has a core temperature of 72 degrees, allowing it to flower through the frost and what snow remains in the swamps and attract the earliest of pollinators. Others may get knocked back by seesawing temperatures without the insulating snow cover.

We still experience killing frosts in these parts until the latter part of May. Between now and then, the temperature will swoop and dive like a flycatcher, and mud will cake the bottom of my boots and tires.

Spring is in the ooze, the smell of damp earth and leaf mold, and the sound of birds returning. As with all births, it can be a bit messy, but remains one of life’s great glories nonetheless.

Bring on the peepers! Bring on the green shoots of new life returning! There may be more snow between now and then, but spring is not far off, and as the clocks “spring forward†this weekend, our boots will squelch in mud.

Tim Abbott is program director of Housatonic Valley Association’s Litchfield Hills Greenprint. His blog is at greensleeves.typepad.com.