FIELD NOTES
Return
to Musings main page
|
"Of
pools and plans."
In the depths of Winter, it is
hard to believe that the
riots of Spring will come; hard to believe that the delicate life below
frozen
pond or ground will reappear with any flourish. And yet the birds have
already
changed their tunes and, by the time you read this, our first string of
amphibians will have kicked the frost out of their bones and made their
ways to
pools and hidden sloughs to breed. Some years, such as this, the snow
leaves
early but the warm spring rains are fickle, and so thawed pools await
the rain
that will trigger the amphibian influx. Other years, such as last, rain
comes
atop the dregs of winter. Then, Wood Frogs and Spotted Salamanders
clamber
across patches of snow, and slip down small holes in the ice of
still-frozen
ponds, their aquatic forms seeming ill-suited to such Arctic tasks.
These creatures are driven not
by beginnings but by ends. Their
eagerness to start their activities anew is propelled less by an urge
to smell
Spring’s wet green air, and more by a fear of the parching summer heat
of July
or August. This heat can rob them of their nurseries. Breeding in
shallow
pools, their aquatic young must grow and metamorphose into terrestrial
adults
before the waters dry. Hence the rush to mate – tarry too long and your
young
will die in the caking mud of fetid pools. Some years it happens.
Perhaps they seek such
precarious sites because fish,
potential devourers of their eggs and young, cannot survive these
wet/dry
rhythms. These amphibians are left to choose, not between a rock and a
hard
place, but between a Bass and a dry place. Evidently, the latter choice
is most
often the best, and most species try to fit their mating and larval
development
into the short window between spring thaw and summer drought.
Vernal pool creatures have
“learnt” to weigh these fates,
and their instincts drive them to the pools just as instinct drives
shad
upriver or send birds north. But they have not “learnt” about us, we
who drain
their little pools as inconvenient puddles or dig them out and put in
fish and
swimming rafts. Or, barring destruction of their waters, turn their
upland
refugia to other purposes. Their Spring orgies are only their
cotillions; the
adults spend but a week or two in the pools, and then, leaving their
jellied
eggs to grow, themselves return to the surrounding woods to eek out a
living
that will let them return next year. Clean away the forest that
surrounds the
ponds and you have destroyed them just as surely as if you drained
their pools.
Perhaps they can’t learn about us. Perhaps we are too whimsical yet
unforgiving
in our ways.
But the moral of this little
spring tale is not so much one
of wilderness as of respect. If you had hitched a ride upon the back of
a Red-tail
Hawk 150 years ago and then flown across our country, you would have
seen a
land of small fields outlined by stone walls. The woods would have been
largely
cornered on hilltops or in wet draws, or exiled to the ‘Back 40’ for
firewood
or lumber. Wetlands were circumscribed by pastures, drained as meadows,
or
ignored on hillside perches. Yet, somewhere in that tapestry lurked
enough
woodland and enough wetland to keep these creatures going up to our
generation.
Indeed, we have found Spotted Salamanders sharing their waters with
cows in
cattle ponds backed up against woods, cattle ponds too meager for a
fish; we
have stumbled on Wood Frogs making their way across pastures; we have
found
them in ponds midst cornfields, and in wetlands between hillside and
vegetable
garden. They will find their way, if we let them.
Our task, as creatures who can
envision the future in ways beyond
our instincts, is to use our talents of foresight for the good of all.
While our
impromptu actions may be the greatest threats to instincts’ polished
but eonal
plans, our will to learn and to anticipate is perhaps its greatest
cushion
against the unexpected.
So, where is our land now? What
do you see if you fly over
in some light Cessna? Where are the grasslands that will welcome
meadowlark or
bobolink? Where the ridgetops that will catch the butterflies flitting
on their
ways? Where those wetlands for the ardent frogs and salamanders of
Spring?
Where the crops that will feed us? Where the houses that will shelter
us?
There are many such questions,
some easily answered, some
less so; some to be answered with pride, others with regret; some
foregone,
some still awaiting the verdict of time. However, the most important
mindfulness
is not so much in knowing all the answers, but rather in having the
respect to
ask; is not in accepting our landscape in set monochromatic hues of
economics,
conservation, We/Them, farming/not farming, but rather in perceiving
the
richer, spectrum in which we all live, where land feeds us, befriends
us,
protects us, supplies us. This is a dynamic spectrum of landscape and
human
motivation so complex that, if we do not ask it where it is going, we
will have
little idea of its destination until, for better or worse, we are
there.
As we hurry through
the beauty of our landscape towards
whatever is our next task, it is easy to forget to ask. It is easy,
midst the
riots of Spring, to forget the potential depths of Winter.
|
