A woman in her forties with a sleek dark ponytail, in a glossy yellow rain jacket and black rubber boots, stepping through a muddy backyard in March with a basket on her arm

Rain Boots by the Back Door in Mud Season

The pair of black rubber boots hold March in layers of dried mud on the newsprint by the back door.

Ruth Amsel 2 min read

The pair of rubber boots stand inside the back door on a rectangle of newsprint, soles to the wall, tops gaping. They are black, the kind the farm store keeps in a bin by the register, and the mud is the first thing seen: a collar at the ankle, a coat up the shin, thin grey-brown where one boot has rubbed the other in the closet.

They are the March boot. They go on when the snow softens and the yard turns to water, and they come off when the ground firms enough to carry a person. For the weeks between those two days, they are the only footwear that matters. The man wears them for the animals, the child wears them to the bus stop, and both wear them halfway through the house because lacing and unlacing for every trip to the truck takes too long. The boots are not tied, mostly; the laces are left knotted once and stepped into, heel first, the same way every time.

a pair of black rubber boots caked in grey-brown mud standing on a sheet of newspaper inside a farmhouse back door, the yellow rain jacket dripping on a hook above them, drizzle on the storm door glass

Inside the left boot the flannel liner has gone grey and thin at the heel from the foot sliding in and out. The right boot is looser at the ankle; the rubber has creased there, pale lines that do not go away when the boot is empty. The outside edges of both soles are worn rounded, the left more than the right, and the tread blocks are packed with dried mud, so the pattern is visible only at the edge of each cell.

The mud dries in layers. Road sand, clay, soaked leaf matter, and then more over the top. Where the clay was heaviest the dried layer has gone rust-coloured; where snowmelt washed old mud away, the new coat is pale and wet to the touch. The layers crack at the ankle when the boot is set down hard, and chips of dried mud scatter on the newsprint and stay there until somebody sweeps.

The newspaper under them came from a Sunday and has been sitting by the back door since early in the month, opened flat. It soaked up the water from the first fast melt and dried into the shape of the boot soles: two rust-coloured prints, heel and toe, darker where the tread bites deeper. The ink has come off on the rubber, so the boots carry a few reversed letters near the heel. Around the prints the paper has gone soft and grey; the article printed there is legible only in patches.

They stand at the door for the two months of the year when the road end is a pond and the ground carries water. When the ground finally firms, the boots get a rinse at the spigot, but only one. Then they sit on the shelf under the stairs until late November.

later that afternoon at the end of a muddy country lane by a row of mailboxes, laughing toward the camera under a clear umbrella, the yellow rain jacket and the black boots splashed with mud

Each evening they are set back on the newsprint in the same angle, right boot over left. The right boot leans against the wall at the edge of the newspaper.