Life with dogs.
Yesterday, we had snow falling. Today, a sunny 48 degrees, and melting snow and ice all over. In Maine, in March, that means MUD. Late this afternoon, we took a walk down the dirt (mud) road, and into the woods, still a good foot deep in snow. The dogs raced down the road like they'd never been out before, splattering mud everywhere and leaving footprints an inch deep. When they got to the woods, they bounded in, once again chest-deep in snow. Koko ran to check out his favorite, blessedly empty, burrow on the hill, while Harley went off to find the best spots for exuberant bear-dog full body rolling. As I watched them both frolicking like puppies, I listened to the buzz of the snowmobiles racing up and down the lake, themselves frolicking in the last weeks of being on the ice.

Walking home, my boots sinking several inches into the sun-squishy mud, I still had to watch for icy patches, and the metal Trax on my boots, while keeping me from slipping on the ice, also collected a pound or two each of earth. Yuk. This kind of weather marks the first stage of mud season in Maine, between winter and spring, marked by days of deep mire where car tires sink six inches into the muck, and night temperatures dropping well below freezing, turning the mud tracks into huge, frozen, solid ruts. Our cars steer themselves through all this, if we're lucky. If we're lucky, the ruts don't get so deep we can't drive through. We did out our rubber boots, cleaning and storing the heavy-duty deep-snow boots for another year. The heaviest parkas move from convenient hooks to hangers, not yet ready to retire for the season but no longer needed every day.

And throughout it all, the dogs. Excited by the sunny warmth, excited by the still-snowy woods, excited by the slowly emerging signs of new life: scents accessible only to them, of sleepily stirring critters beginning wake from hibernation, of new birds returning from winter wanderings, of not-yet-visible new growth that we humans won't be aware of for weeks yet.

The thing about dogs is, as much as I wish winter's clean snows and crisp cold could last longer, as much as I initially despair of keeping two big dogs, and the small house we live in, un-muddied, their enthusiastic enjoyment of whatever comes their way is contagious, and I too begin to take joy in the warming sun, the sloppy earth, and the marks of nature's march onward.

Tonight, we change our clocks, turning them them ahead an hour. But it's my dogs that tell me it's time to enjoy the outdoors in a different way now.