It is impossible to understand mud season in northern New England without experiencing it.
I’ve traveled what by now must be thousands of miles on dirt roads, but I’ve never experienced anything like mid-March into April in Maine. A road that’s as solid as concrete from May through February becomes oozing, brown porridge as Spring approaches, and stays that way for weeks. Passing over this goo in a vehicle produces ruts deep enough to bury a vehicle up to the axles, and walking, or what passes for it, can bury a person up to mid-calf. It’s a horrible mess, and the only time of the year that I truly dislike in my adopted home.
The mud occurs here because the ground freezes deeply this far north. So, when warmer temperatures of spring arrive and thaw the top layer of earth, the ground a few inches down remains frozen. Melting snow and early spring rains have nowhere to go, so anything other than stone becomes saturated, holding onto the water until it reaches the consistency of runny porridge. It stays that way until the ground beneath thaws, allowing the water to pass through. When that occurs, the top layer of earth will again solidify and life will return to normal almost overnight. But until that day comes, we live in a world of mud, mud, and more mud.
We buried one of our vehicles, a large SUV, up to the axles last week. It’s an older Volvo, with all wheel drive and an amazing set of snow tires, so it doesn’t get stuck easily even in the goop. But Kate found that driving it at highway speeds was like trying to ride an unbalanced washing machine in the spin cycle, so we took it over to our mechanic, thinking we had broken something. He called the next day with the news: Each wheel was so packed with mud (in places that couldn’t be seen from outside) that they were horribly out of balance. He removed almost a bucket of peanut butter-like goo from each one, which restored the car back to health. But that’s the kind of mud we’re talking about.
We deal with the mud in part by putting large stone into it. That shores things up nicely, but leaves a surface that makes a cobblestone street seem like glass by comparison. So, a few weeks later we put smaller stone on top of that, and level it out. After a few years and a king’s ransom of expense, you can have a decent surface even during mud surface. But it’s ridiculously expensive and takes days of work to accomplish.
The parts of the road that don’t get the layers of stone this year will be dealt with via the tractor and various implements. I’ll use a back blade first to pull material (rocks) back onto the road from the sides. Then I’ll drag another type of blade over the ground to loosen up the now-hard dirt, and use yet another to spread out the material that comes up, producing a rather smooth surface that has a “crown”, which means the road is highest in the middle with a slope to the sides, to allow water to run off easily. It will take at least two to three days of work to get rid of most of the potholes and ruts left over from winter.
There may come a day when we deal with mud season by simply packing up and going south for a month or so come early March. But until then we’ll wade through the brown porridge and continue to pour money into stone that gets poured into the road. It’s the way of life here in northern New England, and likely will be for long after I’m gone.
