Here’s mud in your sty

To every season, churn, churn

By Max Alexander

Geologists will tell you, if you take your shoes off first, that mud has been around for a long time. Longer than dry ground, when you think about it. First came water, which covered the earth and gradually receded. Something had to happen between the primeval water and the primeval dry ground, and it would have been similar to what comes between winter and spring in Maine (known seasonally as the Pine Tree or Semi-Liquid State), except it lasted eons and nobody had rubber boots.

Mud doesn’t get the respect that its age might command. Mud is ugly by any word. Mud is slop, grime, slime, filth, muck, mire, sludge, slush, smut, ooze, glop, gunk, splosh, swill, smudge, grunge. Even archaic words for mud are sloppy, like slabby. A repository for mud sounds even worse: it’s a muckhole, a bog (which is the equally disgusting gob spelled backwards), a quagmire, a sty, a hovel, a sump or a slough (pronounced SLOO; the same word pronounced SLUF means the skin that a reptile sheds, or the verb that shakes it off). It’s true that certain mudholes in the British Isles are called loblollies, which doesn’t sound so bad unless your Vauxhall is stuck in one. But when a word that might mean mud sounds vaguely noble, like midden, it turns out to be a dung heap, which technically isn’t mud at all. Mud rarely inspires, and in fact exists to disappoint.

Muddy verbs do not describe good deeds. Muddy thinking can muddy the waters, which is not the same as being Muddy Waters, who grew up on a plantation and knew the difference between midden and muck. Politicians muck things up — which is possibly worse than fucking things up, as they do when they sling mud. Putting snowmobiles and beer on credit cards could get Mainers in my corner of the state mired in debt, but of course thrifty Yankees never get into that sort of muddle.

It’s a muddy world out there, and defense demands constant vigilance. Thus we have mudguards on cars and muckrakers in journalism. An entire world war was fought in muddy trenches — a nasty quagmire that gave us the soldier’s ironic toast “Here’s mud in your eye!”

I parked in a muddy field at Rockland High School to attend the public supper for Ray Kelly. Ray is an English teacher at the school as well as my neighbor; his southwest alder bog ends at my northeast winterberry quagmire, and as neither of us is a professional logger, we are in a definite minority around the general store. Ray’s wife Maddy is also a teacher, with my wife Sarah at the Ashwood Waldorf School. Their daughter teaches at a public school in the Bronx. Last fall, Ray was diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, a degeneration of the motor neurons that has no cure. Some victims live for decades, but usually the disease results in total paralysis of the voluntary muscles, including those for speaking and swallowing, after three to five years.

Ray and Maddy are the kind of teachers who change kids’ lives, so it wasn’t surprising to see many of their devoted students among the more than 800 folks crowding into the gym for spaghetti and salad. The event raised more than $4,000, some of which the school forced Ray to take; he wanted it all to go to the ALS Foundation.

In fact Ray hasn’t spent much time worrying about himself since his diagnosis. He is still teaching, even though symptoms of the disease are making it harder for him to make the forty-minute drive into Rockland every day. He is still serving as president of the Washington Library Association, whose trustees manage the magnificent public library that was built in our tiny town in 1991 — thirty years after the old library burned down along with the high school.

Last month the Washington townsfolk had a meeting to figure out some practical ways to help Ray and Maddy. Helen, our resident massage therapist and healing expert, put together a list of chores to divvy up. Some people signed on to feed their farm animals; others will cook dinners. Sarah offered to help with housekeeping on weekends, and since I work at home I volunteered to drive Ray to doctor’s appointments. Doctors are a long way from here, and I’m looking forward to spending some time with Ray in my truck.

I spoke to him briefly at the spaghetti supper, but it was difficult. The school’s jazz band was running full-tilt through “In the Mood,” which would have made it hard to converse even if Ray weren’t having trouble speaking clearly. “That’s so nice of you,” he kept saying about our volunteer efforts. Because his speech is impaired, it’s easy to assume he’s muddled, but he’s not. The disease does not affect intellect.

I had a hard time rounding up my nine-year-old after the supper; he was outside playing in the mud. Kids have no problem with mud. They are closer to the earth in every way, and they even have a word that makes mud sound okay: mudpie. I suppose children become adults when mud no longer feels good. But mud is just another season between life and death, and if you can learn anything about mud season from kids and Ray Kelly, it’s that there is nothing to fear in the mire.

Max Alexander can be reached at malex@midcoast.com.