The Dawn of Spring

The only one up in a darkened house, I walk through the dim halls softly. As the sun is still many hours off, and doors closed where the others still sleep. It is this time before dawn, that I love best, before the pace of the day quickens. And in the quiet of this time, though I cannot see them, I know they are there, beginning to stir--
waiting for the hush to be lifted.
For every thing I know and love,
for now, I must remember.


The brown outside is all around--still, lifeless and waiting.
The tiniest hint of green barely showing where flowers soon will be. Beyond the flattened grass of the lawn, the garden lies as a yawning space, dark soil on which to plant.
On the hill we wait.
A night of heavy rain has knocked out the power again.

I walk slowly out, across the soft, saturated ground, past resting fields of brown grasses. Moon covered deeply in clouds, my single light scanning broadly.
Am I the only one here?
I step carefully back, into the protection of the evergreens, through to the shallow pool where I know I will soon find them and peek quietly in.
Just below the surface, only ice.
They are not yet here.
But in this warm night air, I sense their stirring, salamanders waking, just below the surface, waiting for this hush to be lifted.
For every thing I know and love,
for now, I must remember.

Last spring I monitored 2 vernal pools on our property and found that 2 species of mole salamanders use them as breeding areas. I witnessed Spotted Salamanders, Ambystoma maculatum, migrating there at the end of March, but missed the Jefferson Salamander, Ambystoma jeffersonianum, migration weeks earlier. This year, I'm hoping to catch it.
It is not known exactly what triggers mole salamanders’ movement from underground, where they live and eat until hibernating through the winter, to these pools of their birth for breeding each spring. It is thought to be factors including ground and air temperature (a 3-day mean temperature above 42 degrees), loose water within the soil (from heavy spring rain), a reversal of the soil temperature profile (surface becomes warmer than subsurface) and darkness (clouded, moonless night). Jefferson Salamanders are known to walk through snow and enter pools as soon as ice melt opens an edge.