Hello!

It has been a very dry spring--one many would choose, eager for the warmth and beautiful rays of sunshine to follow this gray winter.
I, too, turn my face upward and draw it deeply in, yet it is not as it should be--
for this season is one of wetness.

I walk through the brown, dried, tangled grasses of the field, into the woods surrounding Wood Pool, shallower and already less wide than last year, my boots tossing the light, crisp leaves ahead of each step, scuffing along the dry trail.
And I wonder how they will walk here, tender bodies, without the softness left by rain.

Several males are already in Little Pond Pool, from journeys days ago, when light rain over warm earth released them to walk to this water. Each night I spent watching and waiting by the trail at midnight, hoping to meet them before losing them into the darkness of the pool. And, though I see their spotted bodies flash and turn below the water’s surface, it does not feel the same to find them already here.
I miss the walking.

Perhaps because this remarkable migration defines them.
Gathering these solitary beings for just several days into small pools of spring rain.
From adjacent fields and woods, acres beyond these borders, across roads and fences, they will return home.
Then, again, go off to disappear below the ground.

This evening dark clouds brought a beautiful rain.
And the grass glistened and shone brightly in the beam of my flashlight. I turned my face upward and drank in the damp night air.
And it was as I had hoped—
a salamander rain.

Spotted Salamander. Ambystoma maculatum, female
walking to Little Pond Pool
March 8, 2009

Another male (?)

Is there a sweeter, smiling face?

Spotted Salamander, female


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