Mud Season

'The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.' - e.e.cummings

It's mud season in Breckenridge.

Also Gracie shedding her winter coat season.

Things are sort of messy here.  Soggy and smelly and somehow sublime.  Funky and furry and full of promise.  Some mornings we walk out with the dogs and you can feel it in the air.  Everything changing.  Life circling.  Gracie is getting ready for warmer weather.  The earth is soaking up the snowmelt.  There are worms on the roads and birds in the trees.  Mucky magnificence is everywhere.  It's springtime in the Rockies.

It's spring, and it is quiet.  Ski season is over and the mountain has closed.  Most of the tourists have left town.  Summer is still a few weeks away, so the hikers and bikers have not yet arrived.  A lot of the restaurants in town are taking a break and have closed their doors for a few weeks.  The ones that are open are running some really good specials.  Which we have been taking advantage of.  On occasion.

Tractor Shed Red at Modis

Elk at Hearthstone

Some of the locals have told us they love this time of year.  They like how you can go downtown and get a parking spot on Main Street.  They like how there aren't long lines in the grocery store, and how it feels like their town again.  They like the quiet.  I don't know if they like the mud.  Gracie does.  When we go out walking she heads straight for every puddle and ditch she sees.  Gracie is pretty low to the ground.  And yellow.  Ish.  At least when we leave the house.

Boreas Pass

Gold King Road

Burro Trail

When she gets home she is sopping and stinky and ready for a rub down.  Which she loves even more than playing in puddles.

I kind of love the mess and the muck too.  But then dirt has always made me happy.  I love to dig in it with my bare hands.  To weed and plant and help things grow.  Maybe it's because my ancestors were farmers.  Maybe it's because I was born under an earth sign.  Or maybe it comes from my childhood.  I don't remember my mom ever getting mad at us for coming home muddy and dirty.  We played in the field behind our house all year long.  There was a pond in the field, and a long ditch leading to it.  We had ditch jumping contests, and sometimes we fell in.  We brought home tadpoles from the pond that we left in the garage and forgot about.  We built forts in the field.  My mom let us make messes.  She let us get dirty.  Maybe she was just distracted.  Or maybe she knew what science now says is true.  That playing in the dirt is healthy.  That playing in the dirt can actually make you happy.

When we were in the process of moving out of our place in Lihue, the place that had no room for me to dig, I had a dream.  I dreamed we had moved in to our new home in Kapaa with the jungle backyard and that I was lying spread eagle on the ground embracing the earth.  I was hugging the ground with my whole body.  And I was happy.

Gracie's hair doesn't make me all that happy.  It's everywhere.  Floating in the air, landing on the table, getting in our food.  It covers our floors and clothes.  Even Rufus, the big black lab, has her hair all over him.  Life's messy.  Especially in mud season.  And giving birth is messy.  And creating things is messy.  Sometimes messy is good.  I will always be grateful to my mom for letting us make messes.  For letting us create.  And get dirty.  And play in the mud.

I hope I never stop wanting to play.  To splash in puddles.  To see the promise in the fuzz and slime.  Because what are the chances that we even get to be here to experience it?

'And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.  Lucky me, lucky mud.' - Kurt Vonnegut

There's always something to get through.  Mud season and Gracie shedding her winter coat season are temporary.  The next season will come.  There will be blossoms.  Things will come back to life.  There's no way to avoid the mess right now, so we are splashing right through.  Waiting to see what comes next.  Looking for buds.  Anticipating blooms.  Trying to remember to look up.

And to find joy.

In mud season.

Or any season.