Life in Northern Towns IV

Walking outside nowadays, during our damp and windy spring here in Northfield, I'm amazed by how much mud the world contains. I try to keep away from it, what with dress shoes and khakis and other accoutrements of adult life, but Julia loves it, kinda. She has to stop our walks (or dismount from her carries, more like it) to inspect loose clods of turf on the sidewalk, bike-tire ruts on the boulevard, brown puddles in the sidewalk cutouts. As she crouched today to cautiously check out a big chunk of mud in our path, I thought about the innumerable hours I spent in the dirt driveway of the farm in Ironwood, using sticks and a trowel to create channels, streams, dams, levees, and lakes. I was a one-kid Bureau of Reclamation, ruling a hundred square feet of springtime mud. I hope Julia enjoys the mud as much.