On Soil, Arrogance, and the Loss of Good Shoes

A struggle older than fences . . . .
Older than porches.
Older than the first confident step taken in good shoes.

It is the ancient feud.

Mud vs. Man.

And Mud remembers.

There was a time — before patios, before stepping stones arranged in hopeful little paths — when Soil lay quiet.

Soil was tilled.
Soil was plowed.
Soil was harrowed, raked, persuaded into obedient rows.

Soil endured.

But then came the greater insults.

Bulldozers.

Mud remembers the bulldozers.

Steel teeth biting deep. Engines roaring overhead. Whole hillsides shoved aside as though they were crumbs on a tablecloth.

Mud did not protest.

Mud does not shout.

Mud waits.

There was the Dust Bowl.

Mud remembers that, too.

Man stripped the land bare. Plowed it proud. Spoke of yield and progress and expansion.

Then the wind came and carried Soil across state lines like a traveling salesman.

Man called it disaster.

Mud called it . . . . documentation.

Mud has been pressed into bricks.
Stacked into ovens.
Dried in the sun and ordered to hold up roofs.

Has Man no decency? No heart?

Mud endured being baked.
Mud endured being molded.
Mud endured being dismissively swept from stoops in late August.

Mud endured.

But Mud remembers.

Spring arrives.

The thaw begins.

Dust gathers itself.
Clods reconsider their position.
The earth inhales rain and exhales resolve.

Mud rises into full Mudness.

Not angrily.

Never angrily.

Just . . . . thoroughly.

Man steps outside.

Confident.

Contemptuous.

“It’s just dirt,” he says — the way conquerors have always spoken of terrain and empires.

Mud hears him.

Mud adjusts.

Mud does not forget the shovel.
Mud does not forget the sweep of the stoop.
Mud does not forget the beige loafers.

Especially the beige loafers.

The first step sinks.

Man pauses.

The second step follows — loyal, but misguided.

There is a sound. Ancient and terrible. Somewhere between a glorp and a schlurp.

Mud tightens its hold.

Man windmills.

History tilts.

Mud does not chase.

Mud invites.

“Go on,” Mud seems to say. “Cross the yard. I insist.”

Scholars may debate empires and revolutions, but history records that few strategic errors rival the first confident step taken in good shoes.

This is how it begins, you see . . . .

Man pulls upward.

His foot emerges.

The beige loafer does not.

There is a pause.

Mud has made its selection.

Man lurches forward, off-balance, and scrambles toward the porch — one surviving loafer slapping wood, one innocent argyle sock exposed to consequence.

From the relative safety of the threshold, he turns.

He reaches and extends . . . .

This, too, is arrogance.

Mud does not argue.

Mud tightens.

There is resistance.
There is suction.
There is a deeply satisfied schlurp.

The loafer sinks.

Not quickly.
Not dramatically.
Just steadily.

Beige disappears.

Mud keeps what it remembers.

The man, in a foolhardy attempt at rescue, stretches once, extending his wet-socked foot — bravely, foolishly — between porch and yard . . .

Another gratified schlurp, and Mud claims the mustard-yellow, polka-dotted, brown argyle sock without ceremony.

The yard settles.

Man straightens slowly.

One loafer on.
One bare foot.
No illusions.

Mud says nothing.

Mud has secured tribute.

Mud has all afternoon.

Reinforcements arrive.

The Dog.

The Dog has no allegiance.
The Dog serves Chaos.

Bounding across the yard, triumphant and entirely unburdened by footwear, the Dog churns the battleground into something between chocolate pudding and prophecy.

Mud does not intervene.

Mud observes.

The Dog slides once — recovers magnificently — then commits.

There is digging.
There is enthusiasm.
There is rotational velocity.

Then comes the shaking.

A full-body convulsion of gratitude.

In that moment, the Dog ceases to be a pet and becomes an airborne mud-pudding distribution system.

Mud arcs through the air in slow, triumphant ribbons.

The porch railing is baptized.
The siding is spatched and splattered.
The underside of the eaves is speckled in brown.

Man, already diminished, looks up not in time.

Mud travels.

Mud connects.

Mud expands its influence.

Man is splashed and slathered.

The Dog beams.
The Dog convulses and shakes again in Springtime glory, and a setting coating is applied.

Man sputters.

Mud, meanwhile, sits back and chuckles in silence.

Mud did not need to act.

Mud outsourced.

For centuries, Man has cultivated, carved, stacked, molded, paved, and claimed the earth as his own.

But every Spring, without fail, Mud stages its quiet correction.
And waits . . . .
Mud reminds that it remembers.

No banners.
No speeches.
No rage.

Just suction.
Loss.
And laundry.

And the unmistakable understanding that we do not conquer the ground — we are only temporarily tolerated by it.

The struggle continues.

Boot to soil.
Confidence to consequence.
Leather to reckoning.

Mud vs. Man.
The evidence favors Mud.
The outcome has rarely been in doubt.

Mud remembers.

And Mud wins.

---

 

‘Til next time then . . . .
— Jim  (and Red!)

P.S. from Little Red Bear —
Cinnamon Charlie, occasionally bored waiting for a fish to bite, would make mudballs and toss them into the lake. On one occasion in early Spring, he got a sizable strike on his line and proceeded to reel in a whopper out of Perch Lake. The fish made one determined run in one direction, and Charlie made one determined pull in the opposite direction.

The Mud made the final decision.
The fish got away.
Charlie did not.

He rose from the shoreline slowly, mud-coated to the elbows, hat askew, and blinking at the sky as if it might offer an explanation for what had transpired. Little Red Bear says the bass was later seen swimming teasingly near the dock that afternoon while Charlie took a bath in the lake. And that the Mud along the bank looked quietly pleased.

Mud remembers . . . .

Pen-and-ink illustrations created with the assistance of AI and lovingly styled for Little Red Bear Land.