Mud season is not something Chambers of Commerce feature. Even those of us who love winter have cabin fever by now. Spring is still a ways off. Getting there is a slog.
But we made it through the dark days before the winter solstice, and survived that long stretch of sub-zero temperatures in January. For weeks, the world has felt as precarious as the trip down an icy driveway to the mailbox across the road. Mud season is almost as likely to find us tail over teakettle. Yet we put on our tall boots and greet mud season with resolve and the sure and certain hope that better days are coming.
Tough times give us practice at being resilient, although we’re more likely to label it showing up. Mud season reminds us that we don’t persist just to collect a participation medal. We show up because that’s what rural people do.
So here are some reminders, courtesy of mud season, about showing up for our communities even when things get ugly.
Make it a party. In past years, I actually looked forward to mud season because it brought friends out of hibernation and into the woods to collect sap for making maple syrup. This year will be different because our syrup-making neighbors are not exactly retiring but taking a year off. They’re getting older and collecting sap, cooking it down and bottling it is hard work, even when you have a fun crew. So we won’t have the ritual of carrying buckets of sap through the snowy woods and slogging through muddy tractor tire ruts.
I’ll miss spending that time with people who most likely have seen recent events through a much different lens. But in the woods, we don’t talk about immigration or voting legislation. We talked about kids and grandkids, health concerns, garden plans, bird feeders and what’s been leaving tracks in our yards. So maybe we’ll plan to get the sapping crew together for a weenie roast in the woods. Bill makes a dandy homebrewed ale with Mike and Alice’s maple syrup. We should make some maple root beer soda, too. We all have sapping stories to tell. We’ll make it a party.
A healthy distance. The big news in my neighborhood lately has been about the young black bear showing up in people’s yards. It seemed early for bears to be out of their dens. But maybe not early for a mama bear nursing newborns to shoo a male yearling off to fend for itself. Will it make the best choices when there are tempting food sources like garbage cans, pet food and bird seed? Maybe not. But driving off a young male sooner rather than later might give it time to establish an area of its own at a healthy distance from Mom and cubs when mature males start looking for breeding partners.
For my two-legged community, a healthy distance in mud season might look more like a trip to someplace warmer and sunnier, or a weekend at an indoor water park. But distance doesn’t have to be geographic: It might be just more time spent watching basketball. March Madness gives us something to talk about besides politics and bear sightings. If hoops isn’t your thing, try Olympic curling. Maybe even invite the neighbors to bring their cast iron skillets, pressure cooker and tea kettles to your icy driveway and pretend you’re sliding in Italy for Team USA.
Mistakes happen. Northern people may grill out year-round but we don’t put our snow shovels away on the first day that smells like spring. Still, mud season can fool the best of us. Robins return, then face starvation when a foot of new snow and ice keeps them from feeding on earthworms and insects.
Loons seem to know exactly when the ice will go off the lakes and show up within hours. But sometimes from the air a blacktop parking lot looks a lot like open water. Loons need from 30 yards up to a quarter-mile of open water to get up enough speed for lift-off when taking flight. When they land on a parking lot, they’re stuck. So mud season brings out volunteers to rescue loons fooled by seeing things from a perspective that doesn’t provide sufficient information to make good choices. Maybe some of our neighbors, too, have made choices that seemed okay from a perspective that masked consequences. They might try to avoid rescue (not unlike the common loon). But eventually, maybe they too will welcome a hand extended in friendship.
Misery loves company. We’re all pretty tired of careful conversations and worse – feeling like judges are scoring every point made any time we open our mouths. Maybe the only way to win is for everyone to lose. Stories about vehicles stuck in the mud are perfect (especially if someone else was driving). I like to open with the ruts the UPS driver left when he got stuck here, or the ruts we dug driving around branches that came down on our driveway in the March 2025 ice storm. Then pass the baton with, “I bet you’ve got some stories.” Tow truck drivers have a natural advantage here, but anyone who has seen a fire truck or ambulance pull onto soft ground when the frost is going out can hold their own. And it’s not a competition. If everyone is laughing, we all win.
Silver linings. Every winter, the rabbits chew on the Therese Bugnet shrub rose that is my pride and joy. Every year during mud season it needs a hard pruning before it breaks dormancy. And every year it rebounds from all that abuse. That rose flourishes partly because it has a strong, healthy root system that can withstand some adversity. And also because rabbits, as they test plant resilience, drop fertilizer right where it does a beleaguered bush the most good.
I’m trying to remember that when it feels like democracy is getting ragged. Our root system is strong. We’ve survived other periods of adversity. There’s no shortage of fertilizer being spread. Maybe we’ll still find a silver lining. Maybe it will look like us listening more to our neighbors than to our algorithms. Wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?
Walking on eggshells. Northern gardeners in mud season are like baseball teams at spring training: Everything feels possible. So you’re tempted to start 60 tomato plants under grow lights in February. They’d be leggy long before your last frost date, though. So you might as well wait a few more weeks. Maybe start fewer. But any extras can be traded with other gardeners.
There are no political purity tests among rural gardeners. We may not feel free to exchange some opinions with neighbors who vote for the other side. We will, however, share seedlings and fill cardboard boxes with clumps of lilacs and roses dug from our yards. It might feel like we’re walking on eggshells when our conversations stray to other topics. But if you tell a neighbor your soil needs a boost from crushed eggshells or fish parts, don’t be surprised at what you find on your porch.
Show up. The outrage economy has no interest whatsoever in encouraging unity or community. It would gladly keep us mired in an endless mud season, focused on the ugliness that divides us.
But just showing up for our rural communities won’t make our differences disappear. And it won’t fix the problems that metastasized into those differences. But it’s a start. And in 2026, it’s crucial that we show up.
And a key political strategy in the midterms will be to convince people that their votes don’t matter. Not true. Every vote matters. Downballot races matter. State and federal offices matter. So it’s important to vote for every office in every election. Even when you don’t love the choices.
Sometimes making those choices feels like trying to surf two-by-fours across mud while the frost is going out. It can get ugly. Still, there’s a chance you might make it across without having your boots sucked off in the mire.
Good luck out there.
Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin.
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