March Mud on the Boot Tray

The boot tray in the back entry is a rectangle of black rubber, molded in one piece, with a raised lip on all four sides and a floor cut into shallow diamonds. It is the size of a doormat and heavier than it looks, with enough weight that a boot coming down hard does not skate it across the boards. It sits square between the door and the stair, in the one spot of floor the winter traffic has worn bare, and it has not been moved from that spot since it was put down there.

In December the tray caught snow that melted to clean water and dried without a stain. March puts a different load on it. The top few inches of the yard thaw at midday and freeze again at dusk, softened by a sun that sits higher now, and the sand and salt of winter roads lie loose on top of the lifted soil. Mud season is the freeze and the thaw working the same ground twice a day, and the tray is where that ground arrives. Boots come up the step already wet, their treads packed with a gray-brown slurry, and the first stamp on the tray knocks the worst of it loose. The rest melts out of the treads over the next hour, running into the tray as water while the suspended mud settles in the channels between the diamonds. The raised diamonds hold the boots above the standing water; the lip holds the water off the floor.

The tray is dumped most evenings in March. It is carried by its two ends out into the yard and tipped, and the mud comes off in one soft slab that lands face-down on the grass. Then the standing water follows in a brown sheet. The tray is brought back in and set square against the doorjamb, dripping at the corners, the wet rubber gone black again. By morning the film in the deepest corner has dried to a pale ring, and the first boots of the day set down in the ring and soften it again.

The tray is not for boots alone. Dog paws cross it without stopping, their prints drying and fading through the day. A child sits on the edge of it to pull off rubber boots, one heel braced in the center, and the lip has worn thin at that spot. On dry afternoons the tray is propped against the wall of the entry to dry out, and the wall has left a pale vertical line on the lip where it leans.

Use has changed the look of the tray. The center diamonds, where a body's weight goes while standing, have worn down level with the floor and taken a dull shine. Gravel from the driveway has scratched fine arcs into the surface where heels have pivoted. Salt has roughened the raised pattern and bleached it white along the inside of the lip.

Overnight the entry cools, the rubber stiffens, and the mud in the channels keeps the shape of the evening's boots until the day warms it.