It rained pretty hard the other day.  We needed it, at least I did.  Betsey’s had me working in the garden pretty hard of late and a rainy day puts the quietus on such activity.  So I had a bit of time to contemplate…always a dangerous activity for me. 

You all are aware of the fact that rain plus dirt equals mud?  Well, we had the dirt.  Here was the rain.  The mud was pretty much inevitable. 

And then the contemplating kicked in. Mud.  And that led to Mud Season…Maine's least marketable time o’ the year. But then I don’t work for those damnable eternal optimists in the Maine Tourism Department. 

I can see it now: 

MAINE MUD SEASON 

The Way Life Should Be … Squishier. 

Looking for an authentic Maine experience without all those peskyfellow tourists? 

Come to Maine during Mud Season—that magical interval between winter and spring when the snowbanks turn gray, the frost comes out of the ground, and your driveway develops a personal relationship with your transmission. 

Enjoy traditional Maine activities like: 

• Guessing whether that puddle is two inches deep or two feet. 
• Watching your lawn slowly migrate toward the road. 
• Discovering six months of dog poop you thought would have just melted away with the snow. 
• Washing your car and immediately realizing what a stupid idea that was. 

The scenery? Brown. 

The weather?Also brown. 

The roads? Technically still roads. 

And accommodations are plentiful! Unlike July, you can actually get a reservation because nobody in his right mind deliberately comes to Maine in April.  So avoid the crowds. Forget the foliage. Experience Maine when Mainers have the whole place pretty much to themselves. 

Come to Maine for Mud Season. 

Now the truth is thatMud Season may be ugly as sin, but it's ours. Nobody comes here for it. Nobody photographs it. Nobody rents a cottage to experience it. It's Maine with the company gone home, but the laundry is not done yet.  The tourists get summer and foliage; we get six weeks when the driveway tries to eat the Subaru. 

Here’s the secret: Mud Season is the annual initiation that we endure to call ourselves “Maine-ahs.” It’s the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of the Mire.  It’s a rite of passage for the new “year rounder.” 

And there’s something oddly satisfying that you can’t really explain when you survive a season nobody would ever put on a postcard. 

Winter?  Pah!  Even people from Massachusetts come here for that.   

Fall?  You kiddin’?  We get all those people from states what don’t have their own trees to look at. 

Spring?  Close, but no cigar.  It’s full of summer people trying to get a head start onopening up “camp.” 

But Mud Season?  Yeah…you know what I’m talking about.  We know why old L.L. invented those Bean Boots. Yup.  Mud Season.   

And if yourBean Bootsain’t muddy, well then,we may need to see some identification.