A Muddy Merry Everything!
How life changes! I thought this as I nearly went down in the mud again today.
In 2021, my life went very abruptly from very suburban to living on extensive acreage in the north woods, learning to raise animals and grow plants. It continues here in the Appalachians as we raise sheep, rabbits, and chickens. It's warmer here than in northern Minnesota, so we have less snow. (Hey, our last winter in Duluth we had fifteen feet! So almost anywhere in the US (with a few exceptions) is less snow!) The flip side is, our land is steep and in prolonged late winter/early spring rains, quite slippery with mud. A year and a half ago, I spent so much time slipping and sliding in the muddy pastures with Dustin, who was helping us at the time, wrenching my back even though I never actually fell, that I bought new and, to my mind expensive, mud boots, which I now wear almost every day of the week. They helped a lot. But not completely. I still wobble carefully, with my arms out, trying to maintain my balance in the mud to get to various pastures and animals.
Today was one of many days that brought me back to sixth grade at Laurel Ridge in Fairfax, Virginia in the 1970s. The sixth grade class always got a week at Al Fresco, assuming I'm remembering the name right. Al fresco means outdoors, or so I remember being told at the time. In the week-long camp, we could choose one or two classes or adventures of our choice. One option was the mudslide. Think that scene in Romancing the Stone. To a 12-year-old, this sounds like the greatest thing in the world, slipping and sliding down a run, landing muddy and breathless at the bottom!
The mud slide was canceled due to lack of rain and I signed up for the sailing class instead and then ended up in a canoe as the little sailboats were all taken. I knew canoes. It was hardly a learning experience doing what I'd done so many times before. In my memory that great mudslide I never got would have been so much more fun!
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My better boots have helped me avoid this. But a few weeks ago, I found one of those boots still sliding out from under me in the mud. I grabbed the back of the UTV, wrenching my shoulder, although thankfully not as badly as I feared in the moment, and managed not to slide to the point of smashing my chin on the tailgate of the UTV.
Today, Marshell drove the UTV, loaded with the new purchases of bales of hay strapped onto the back of the UTV and onto the Gorilla Cart behind us, as we slipped and slid down the steep hills. We made it to the rabbit hutch, but on getting out and starting to unload the bales into the covered barn between the rabbits' home and chicken coop, my foot suddenly went slip-sliding away. I grabbed the side of the UTV, as one foot continued to slide. I lucked out again. My boot somehow stopped and I didn't get washed away down the hill ala Romancing the Stone.
I thought again how our perspective changes over the course of a life. What once seemed such a fun thing that was snatched away from me is now a near-daily opportunity...that I don't want and hope to avoid!
So far, I've managed not to fall in the mud.
The picture is AI-generated because I didn't manage to pull out my phone and photograph myself from behind while slipping and sliding in the mud. However, it's surprisingly accurate in many respects. The UTV looks pretty much like ours, my Carhartts are teal, our sheep look like that minus the black one in the distance, and my hair is sort of like that except a little shorter and usually in a braid. Also, I have no idea what that weird six-sided black plate in the UTV in the picture is. Other than all of that--that's just how it was!
I've managed for more than two years now, not to go down on the muddy slopes of our new Appalachian hills. If the time comes I lose that battle, hopefully I can see it as sliding down the muddy slopes of Al Fresco that I once looked forward to and remember I have a hot tub and a bottle of wine to cope with the impacts of such a slide forty-plus years after I first looked forward to such a thing!
But I sometimes wonder what has changed? Why did I once think it would be a blast to go slip-sliding out of control down a muddy slope--and now I don't? Should I just give in and enjoy the ride through the mud--or is there a reason not to?
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