Mud Season

It's mid March, and the beginning of mud season for the mountains. While other parts of the country are boasting frogs calling, trees budding, birds migrating northward, we are sitting watching winter deciding if and when it will end. It's always this dance for us. One day it's warm, in the thirties,(for us that is warm), then the next it's back to winter,snow falling, wind howling,freezing cold.

It's enough to drive you nuts.

Back and forth,warm and cold. Mud comes, then freezes and we dance back and forth, through March,into April and on into May. When you see snow falling in May,it can drive you to crying.

It really makes me wonder why some move here. Usually what happens is someone comes here in summer. They fall in love with the lifestyle, the mountains, lakes and woods. So they may buy a house, and retire up here. Their first winter does them in. " We didn't know it was so cold here", well yeah it is. They move. Or become summer people, and when the first storms of autumn come, they drift away. I mean if you want culture,Portland is 120 miles away. Farmington is a college town, and that's 50 miles. Not much goes on here, except the occasional play, maybe a concert. There is no nature center here, but some of us are trying to change that, and you can't hunt all the time, those that moved here to do so, don't. Trying to make a living and hunting seasons don't allow what some think they want. Fishing is another thing that has a limited season, and most people end up not liking to do a lot alone.

So I walk the few muddy roads that are open, just waiting for them to become safe when the snowmachines stop. Spring is near, I saw a robin the other day. We don't have that many migrants yet.OK, I should say no migrants. Southern Maine and the coast, they do. But my snow buntings did leave, the last I saw them was on the 15th.

Back out to watch more mud.