There is a season on the plains that no calendar names and no one celebrates, falling in the raw weeks between the last snow and the first green. This is mud season, when the deep frost thaws slowly out of the ground from below, and the meltwater, unable to drain through the still-frozen subsoil, turns every unpaved road, farmyard and field approach into a churned and bottomless morass.

The Bottomless Weeks of Spring

The plains gumbo, so rich and productive in the growing season, becomes in the thaw a gluey, boot-stealing muck that can swallow a pickup to the axles and strand a farmstead for days. Rural mail carriers dread it, school buses reroute around it, and the countryside waits, half-marooned, for the ground to firm. It is the price the plains pay for their long, deep winter freeze.

From the almanac's reckoning:

• Meltwater cannot drain through the still-frozen subsoil in spring.
• The rich plains gumbo becomes a boot-stealing, axle-deep muck.
• Rural roads and farmyards can be impassable for days during the thaw.

The season ends as the frost finally leaves and the roads dry and harden into their summer firmness, and the misery is forgotten until the next thaw. The almanac counts mud season among the plains' humbler trials — the awkward, sticky passage from winter's grip to spring's promise, endured one boot-full at a time.