We took to the road to see what we might discover about our neighborhood after this winter.

So much pleasure from a sneak preview of mud season after the thin cold air finally departed and March sunshine came out to caress salt- rimmed dirt roads frozen solid causing a thin layer of mud to promise spring within a couple of hours. 

We basked in the sun — but it is winter still, frost is deeply into the ground, and we are back to huddling now. It was just a tease. Enough to play with but not enough to play in. For a true sucking and slurping mud season the frost needs have heaved itself out of the ground a bit, say six inches or a foot: then only can you expect the true monster that drags small children and dogs into its depths when no one is watching.

I walk in anticipation of ice returning in streams struggling out from under snowbanks: the advance troops of the great melt. Ice with its depths and hard and softness and catching bubble in mid bubble. All that potential being frozen fast in the white solid hard whiteness just now when ice-encrusted mud on the road is all that is available to a poor lonely photographer looking to unlock the flow of it all. For playing with, I took some pics of it, Early Mud Ice from Old South, to be exact.