Did you get it on your shoes too? UGH!
As a proud Hound, one of my favorite aspects of Moravian University is our beautiful campus. We have trees as long as our history and flowers of almost every color. Moravian’s grounds are carefully catered to and protected by groundskeepers at Moravian.
However, you can consider yourself lucky if you haven’t gotten mud all over your shoes or pants after traversing around the HUB construction site recently.
As a consequence of living in a temperate climate, we are approaching the mud season. Meaning that the soil dampens as the snow from winter thaws. This season lasts from late winter to early spring.
On one hand, at least we know our grounds have fertile soil. The more fertile and clay-rich the soil is, the stickier and more saturated the soil becomes.
This is an important aspect of Moravian’s grounds, as the soil must be fertile enough to support all the trees, flowers, and other greenery on our campus.
In the meantime, however, the mud can be bothersome to deal with. I can attest to this with my own story.
I approached the sidewalk along West Laurel S. heading to a meeting I was already running late for.
I noticed the dirt looked darker than usual, and shoe tracks along the sidewalk. It occurred to me that I risked dirtying my shoes, but I thought if I took a light step I could avoid my foot sinking into it. To put it bluntly, it didn’t work out that way.
I not only soiled both of my white shoes, but I also almost slipped when stepping across the mud. When I realized this, my confidence in my outfit immediately diminished, as if my casual everyday shoes had magically transformed into clown shoes.
However, I was almost halfway to where I needed to be and decided to take my loss to the chin. My already fast pace to the meeting was accompanied by the shame of having to continue to walk around with the stains on my shoes.
I’m sure I was not the only one to have this situation, as walking through the mud tracks was nearly unavoidable in certain places of North Campus.
This is the fault of no one and a temporary situation. If anything, I believe this should push everyone to anticipate the spring season approaching.
In the meantime, I understand that the mud is an annoyance to deal with. So, for anyone who is trying to find ways of keeping their tracks clean, here is what I’ve been doing to keep my environment clean as the season continues.
This piece of advice will be more obvious than the rest, but leaving in a timely manner where taking shortcuts is not necessary is one of the best things you can do.
This means no walking across the dirt path to get to the B&G – or walking along the hill to get to/from The Star Dining Hall.
The extra time spent may be an inconvenience, but not more of an inconvenience than a mud stain would be.
My next piece of advice would be to wear thicker shoes. On the colder/wetter days, I like to wear my snow boots. As someone who has to walk down Main Street to get to work, my boots have spared me the embarrassment of slipping multiple times in public.
I have also started taking my shoes off at my dormitory door before walking around inside, that way I can’t leave tracks around the house. For some, this may already be a household rule – others might consider making it one now.
Clearly, this is the fault of no one and a temporary issue. If anything, it is a foreshadowing of the season to come: Spring. Something worth being excited about, might I add.
Hence, if we can get through the brutally freezing temperatures and winds, we can avoid a bit of mud.
