There are very few instances where playing in the mud doesn’t get you in trouble, but at MudFest, the goal is to get muddy. As muddy as humanly possible.
On a sunny Saturday morning at Woodstock Equestrian Special Park in Beallsville, Md., hundreds of people gathered to play in piles of mud. Some slid down hills into a gigantic pool of mud water — the largest, most popular attraction by far — while a live DJ played in the background and a truck offered snow cones.
MudFest is an event organized by the Black Hill Discovery Center, a Maryland green center that provides curriculum-based field trips, nature-based programs and more. Now in its fourth year, MudFest celebrates International Mud Day, which is officially on June 29.
Katrina Faust, a park naturalist at Black Hill and one of the MudFest organizers, said the event is a beautiful way to connect with the Earth while having fun. Faust said before the first MudFest in 2018, the celebration was much smaller.
“We would have like buckets of mud out and we have a mud garden there,” Faust said. “We were doing these kinds of small-scale ones, and they were pretty popular. We were like, ‘Well wouldn’t it be really, really cool to see this done big?’”
Since then, MudFest has grown into a family-friendly event for people of all ages. On Saturday, toddlers, teens and people of all ages spent their morning in muddy mayhem. There were options for all, in case wet mud wasn’t someone’s first choice. Tinker Town was a space for people to build mud towers, dig holes and whatever else their imagination could make out of mud. There were even Mud Kitchens with pots and pans for kids to cook up their best mud-meals.
When Jesse Smith heard of an event where his kids could play in the mud for fun, he jumped right on it. The 46-year-old brought daughter Sloane, 6; son Ryder, 2; and nephew Charlie Sommerville, 5.
“It sounded like a great time,” Smith, a Poolesville resident, said. “It’s local, gets the kids out and let them play in mud, but not get in trouble? That’s a great thing!”
MudFest paused in 2020 because of the pandemic and returned last year.
Many attendees were first-timers, like Jeremy McVicar, 47, who came with his wife Myeongsia, 37, and son Adam, 8, as they were looking for an event to add to their list of yearly traditions.
“We’ll see how it goes. If we like it, we’ll come back next year,” Jeremy McVicar, a Gaithersburg resident, said.
Children dominated the mud slide, but don’t be fooled — adults were in and out of the mud pools too. Some parents went all in with their kids and got themselves muddy. There were even some adults, like 27-year-old Zachary Nelson, that came out for their own day of play.
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Nelson was thrilled about the idea of soaking in a pool of mud for hours, with no responsibilities other than enjoying the day. The Rockville resident originally came with his mother Michal Nelson, who was volunteering at the event, and later found laying in a mud pool to be very relaxing.
“I’m just cooling off. It’s nice on a summer day,” Nelson said.
While it was a day of fun, the goal of celebrating mud and nature was not lost on the guests.
Julia Jackson of Gaithersburg loved seeing kids, especially her children — Maximilian, 8, and Isabella, 5 — spend the day outdoors and have the chance to connect with nature to kick off the summer.
“I think it’s amazing how the kids have really gotten engaged with just being in the dirt and being in nature,” Jackson said. “My kids love playing in the outdoors as well, but a lot of kids don’t get that chance and so coming out here where they can just dig in the mud, have fun play, no rules, no restrictions, you just see sparkle in their faces.”
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Her daughter, Isabella, said, “I like playing in the mud because it’s messy!”
To Faust, one of the best ways to take care of the environment is caring about it and relating to it. What better way to do that than spending hours in the mud?
“I think that this is one beautiful, silly way where you get your hands dirty, and you feel it and you’re just a part of it and there’s joy in that,” she said. “So hopefully that leads us to be connected to Earth and take care of it.”
