Season of Mud
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A friend of mine from Maine says that down east there are five seasons: summer, fall, winter, spring, and mud. Mud is the season between winter and spring, the season of melting snow when winter’s icy grip loosens its hold…but doesn’t quite let go.
When I lived near the bay that divides the eastern end of Long Island into two forks, I witnessed the beginning of this fifth season in a phenomenon which Thoreau describes as the “thundering” of the ice. Dressed for insulation from the February wind, I walked on the snow-covered beach. A sharp cracking sound boomed from beneath the frozen stillness of the bay’s surface. I marveled with Thoreau: “Who,” he asks, “would have suspected so large and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive?” The beach resembled an arctic glacier, large chunks of ice reflecting both sun and sky. They imposed a barrier between sand and sea that appeared invincible even though it was disappearing every moment. Many white ice-rafts drifted with the current while a flock of ducks squawked noisily above.
Two weeks later only a remnant of the imposing glacier remained, and the shoreline was visible again. I could stroll along a thin strip of sand between the water and the ice. I thought of the paradoxes of this in-between season when the rigid is juxtaposed with the fluid; when spring’s warmth softens the winter earth and winter’s chill snatches back the spring air; when each day is an unpredictable and unreliable combination of what was and what will be.
The season of mud begins with thunder and announces change; it is the season of transition. Transitions are times when the thick skin of habit that protected us surrenders to the possibilities of growth and renewal. The inner thawing renders us sensitive and vulnerable to the unpredictable, until we emerge comfortably into new ways of being. We aren’t sure who we are or where we will end up.
In the midst of the mud and muddle of all transitions, the seeds of promise stir quietly beneath the surface like spring bulbs drinking the snow.
- Into the Wilderness - June 1, 2014
- Season of Mud - April 1, 2012
