Mud-luscious and puddle wonderful

In Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring

and

the

goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
e.e. cummings

I found a new country lane to meander down and the e.e. cummings’ words mud-luscious and puddle wonderful jumped into my mind as I smelled the mud as the ice let go of the dirt. It is a smell that only happens in spring, and even if January isn’t spring, it felt like it and it smelled like it.
I side-stepped soaked hoof prints and human foot prints and a tractor rut, but not successfully enough not to leave my shoes two-toned: beige and mud-coloured. They'll be easy to clean.
In one place the mud ran down a series of mini terraces reminding me of my brother and I creating a waterfall of little trickles in our driveway during a March thaw until almost all the muddy water filtered into one of the two puddles that gathered at the bottom of the hill.
The colour of the mud on today’s stroll varied from milk to dark chocolate and I tried to NOT think about a hot fudge sundae.

I passed fields that blocked traffic sounds, but I still could hear airplanes approaching and leaving Cointrin.

I wished I had a dog scampering along besides me. When I did have my dogs(First Albert and Amadeus and later Amadeus and Mika) walking wasn’t a choice. Granted many mornings their walks were minimal, but on weekends in Boston we would circle the pond across the street or stroll along the Muddy River.

The best walks were in Môtiers http://motiers.ne.ch/ that little village where I first lived in Switzerland with the 600 people and 6000 cows. We could walk up a mountain, pass fields with cows, hike to the château, stroll passed Jean-Jacques Rousseau once lived, stop at the waterfall or amble next to a canal.

Sometimes on the way back we would cross the little one-person wide wooden plank bridge over a mini stream. The bridge frightened Albert so he had to be carried across.

Other times we might stop at Mauler & Cie http://www.mauler.ch/ in an old monastery and now a cave that turned the local grapes into a reasonable champagne even if they couldn’t call it that. There was one fountain, where Ama would ask to be lifted up so he could drink some water, probably rearming himself for more territorial marking.

The boys would come back from these long tours “cooked” as my Swiss gentleman friend used to say, meaning they curled up in a ball and would wake only for dinner, eat a bit and go back to sleep until morning.

Walks like this make me want a dog, BUT I know it leads to walks at 10 p.m. in the rain that I don’t want to do. And when I got back to the house, I only have to clean my shoes, not one or two pups who were overjoyed to live in a mud-luscious world.