“Mud season” has long been part of the Maine folklore. It’s spring-but-not-really-spring, or a less-than-welcome winter thaw, or a stretch of cold-weather rain that nearly results in the animals lining up two by two.
When, as they say, the frost comes out of the ground, there is still a frozen layer beneath. This rock-hard subsurface layer prevents the drainage of water from snow melt, spring rain, or runoff, resulting in the sticky muck that we experience each year. Everybody in northern New England has to put up with the mud to some extent, but on Matinicus Island we see mud season in a particularly extreme manifestation. Why?
No paved roads.
Our boots and shoes are the size of elephant feet by time we get home. Cars get truly mired, and have to be pulled out of the ruts in the road with a four-wheel drive. Some spots become annual sinkholes, huge and reliable craters; around these grow great arcs of temporary paths, occasionally resulting in damage to lawns and other non-road property. Our roads soon resemble those of a third-world country. Relaxed bicycling is out of the question, pushing a baby in a stroller is a chore, and jogging is patently absurd.
Actually, it’s worse than that. We on Matinicus are largely dependent on the flying service for mail, UPS, groceries, prescriptions, furnace parts, rum, etc. not to mention passenger trips. There is no boat this time of year, a state ferry but once a month, and many of the lobster boats are hauled out for maintenance.
The air service is essential. Of course, we all know that they can only fly when conditions allow, meaning that visibility is not obscured by rain, snow or fog, the winds aren’t too high, the temperature aloft does not produce dangerous icing, and surface ice doesn’t make it impossible to land and brake safely.
Oh, and the airstrip isn’t too muddy.
You read that right. The gravel strip upon which the airplanes land is just as susceptible to the ravages of mud season as are the roads. We (the flying service and the island) are doing the best we can, trying to get more material onto the surface, putting in culverts, flagging the holes, but still, there are days in the late winter when all scheduled flights have to be first thing in the morning, before the sun is high and the thaw resumes. After that, it’s “save the last landing for an emergency.” The pilots don’t want deep ruts in the airstrip.
It is a mess, and there’s no avoiding it.
This year a few of us decided that the only way to sanely respond to the gloom of mud season was to have a little fun with it, to thumb our sniffling noses at nature’s gooey worst and to refuse to whine. Instead, we “celebrated” this miserable time of year, in a way. We got together and made Mudslides.
A Mudslide, if you look through that greatest of bartender’s guides, the Internet, is just about any drink containing Bailey’s Irish cream and Kahlua. Many versions also include vodka. Some include other, more bizarre liqueurs (I decided not to try the recipe made with butterscotch schnapps.) There are Mudslides made with cream, with coffee, with ice cream, with Hershey’s syrup, and just about anything else that is sweet, brown, and expensive.
We figured we’d just gather up what supplies we could assemble between a few neighbors and do some experimenting. We had several children among us, as well as a couple of non-drinkers and people who still had to go back to work that day, so I can assure you that a drinkable Mudslide need not include alcohol at all. Each concocted his own, with or without the vodka or any other particular ingredient. I don’t think there were two alike.
Eric first made a batch of espresso and cooled it; then, with the blender, he concocted a “Mudslide base” made of crushed ice, espresso, and chocolate ice cream. To this, some added the traditional Bailey’s and Kahlua (my homemade Kahlua, actually, not just the ordinary Allen’s Coffee Brandy, common as sugar in the sugar bowl for a Maine household.) We were not looking for common. We were after decadence. I was caught scraping curls of unsweetened baking chocolate on top of mine.
The table looked like a make-your-own-sundae party, adult style. Suzanne had brought the Bailey’s, to go with my Kahlua and Eric’s espresso. Somebody had some Godiva chocolate liqueur, there was some classy amaretto left from when my mother-in-law last visited, and Heather had just been to the mainland, so she had both chocolate and vanilla ice cream. There was a can of whipped cream, some half-and-half, and whatever other highly caloric offerings we could find in our kitchens (including chocolate sprinkles.)
The floor, needless to say, was thickly covered with tracked-in mud before long. It could not be helped.
June had brought up a wonderful chocolate cake, which Emily sliced into for the kids, and nobody could tell after a while whether the brown on their knuckles and faces was seasonal muck or elegant icing. Who cares?
June made the observation somewhat later that you can’t help but notice how rocks sink out of sight straight down if you’ve intentionally put crushed rock on a muddy driveway, but yet they rise to the surface each year wherever you are trying to maintain a garden.
Very true, not that there’s a darned thing we can do about it. Mud season will win every time. Park your car in the garden, plant your flowers in the road. Have a Mudslide.