A picture of four mud-soaked and delighted children was recently posted on the Facebook page of a children’s museum that we frequented when we lived in California, under the caption: This is how kids should be playing.

I chuckled when I saw it, with a mixture of amusement and bitterness. In that instant, here’s what I thought:

-This is what my own kids, and our dog, have looked like for the past month.

-YES, at my core, I do believe that’s how kids should be playing.

-It’s very easy to sit in Berkeley, California — where THERE IS NO MUD SEASON — and say that’s how kids “should” be playing. Never, in the five years I lived in the Bay Area, did I see kids who really looked like this.

It’s mud season here in Vermont, that fifth season that marks the transition between winter and spring. The snow melts, the ground thaws, and until the trees burst open green leaves we spend weeks squishing through inches of mucky mud.

Click here to continue reading my mud season reflection over at The Addison Independent.