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wallowing the pit dry


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Posted by Zonie on March 06, 2023 at 18:28:07

The Sunday before last I got home after sunset. My clothes were almost dry, but they were so crusted that it wouldn't have been practical to put them directly into the laundry. I got up just after dawn when I'd have enough light to hose them down.

I stripped down to my undershorts. There's a canal bank nearby with morning joggers, so I didn't want to do it buck naked. Overnight the temperature had dropped down to 42°, so it was a bit chilly, but I got it done. I took a metal chair, put it by the fig tree and hosed down the articles of clothing one at a time on that. The fig tree was just starting to get its spring leaves, and I figured it needed the water. The caked on mud would help as well, as I suspect rodeo arena dirt has more nutrients than ordinary dirt.

The overalls came out of the laundry looking just fine. The hoodie looked no better and no worse than before the rodeo. It had been white when I bought it but hadn't been white for many years. The work shirt had been purchased years ago but only worn recently. It was white, and I don't believe it will ever be white again. Maybe buying a white work shirt wasn't the best plan. Still, it's de facto a mud shirt now.

We had another Pacific cold front move through Wednesday night that brought us 0.65" of rain. Saturday I was busy pulling a lot of weeds. I finally got around to going for a mud hike at Reach 11 Sunday afternoon.

I was too late for a lot of it. The March sunshine is getting strong, and most of the area by the equestrian center was already dry. I did find one secluded mud hole, but rather than stomp in it and go to find others, I decided just to have a long wallow. I guess the warmer weather was making me lazy. It got up to 72° yesterday. It was nice, thick, cool and sticky when I started, and I plastered myself, but after a time I found the mud on my overalls was cracking and falling off on its own. I threw mud balls at myself but soon even those weren't sticking anymore. I guess the combination of the heat of the sun and my own body heat dried the mud hole as I wallowed.

As I got up and climbed out of the pit, the thickening mud clung to my boots like massive weights. I headed across the mesquite thicket and found that a lot of that had become a marsh, and it was fun crossing that and scrubbed the heaviest of the mud off my boots.

I then got to the south trail. I could see the sun was getting a bit low in the sky, and I wanted to be home in time to hose down outdoors in daylight, so I headed back along the south trail. There were some good stomping mud puddles there, but I paused frequently as a parade of Mexican bicyclists passed by. When I got to the trailhead, they were loading all the bicycles into a pair of adjacently parked pickup trucks, so I assume it was an extended family outing.

I managed to get home and get my clothes hosed down before sunset. I think Wednesday night's storm was the last blast of the winter. Clear weather is expected all week, and it's expected to get above 80° next weekend. Well it's supposed to be a subtropical desert, so I can't expect cool and rainy weather all the time. It sure has been a fun winter though. I expect the water hole at coyote central will last at least another month, so I can cool off there while hiking on state trust land.



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