Fresh

This morning was bright and crisp.
Barely a covering of Saturday's snowfall remains--a thin crusty layer across the wide expanse of grass. Still early, the air already warming.






In the woods, the frozen pools cycle back and forth. Ice to water to ice.
Fallen leaves join empty branches--a reflection on the dark clear water.




The little pond is quiet now. The stalks where peepers sang loudly last week, stand silent.
Each icy star, a little frog's world.

From inside my house this evening,
I can hear the peepers calling loudly from across the yard.

Six-word Memoir

A six-word memoir sounds simple enough, but when I was tagged several days ago by both Kathie at Sycamore Canyon and Seabrooke of The Marvelous in Nature, I had no idea how this challenge would roll around in my mind. Penned up indoors while a snowstorm raged outside—it was the much needed direction for pensive fireside evenings.
Many have participated in this meme, and the statements they’ve chosen to describe their lives are wonderful—their memoirs are creative, imaginative, succinct…honest. And, although a meme is designed to be shared and passed on to others, the exercise of assessing what one’s life represents is of great value, even if kept to one’s self.

Here are the rules:

1. Write your own six-word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you'd like.
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post and to this original post 6-Word Memoir Meme, so we can track it as it moves across the blogosphere.
4. Tag five more blogs with links.
5. And, don't forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.


I can remember the routine well.
Walk home from school, run upstairs, change out of “good” clothes, have a snack--then go outside. Usually to the woods to build forts or the sand hills to explore—looking for adventure, the greater, the better. My clothes, by bedtime, muddy and covered in burs. A newly acquired “pet” (toad,…), evidence that I had found it.

And although the many different careers I’ve followed as an adult have been in medical facilities, classrooms, or public buildings, where daylight cannot follow—each day’s reward for completing my work has been the same.
Time outside, my other life.

And so, I present my memoir,
"She never outgrew her play clothes."




Are you game?
Tom of The Ohio Nature Blog, Susan of Susan Gets Native, Kathi at KatDoc's World, Lynne at Hasty Brook, and Clare at The House and Other Arctic Musings.
If not, that's okay, too!

Just a glimpse

The snow fell—covering every living thing.
Last week’s warm and noisy nights have been replaced by a cool, quiet stillness.
What had been just a glimpse of spring, now lies beneath a blanket over a foot deep.

The deer walk slowly through the creek bed, plunging their faces into the snow—seeking the scarce buried green.
At the feeder, a squirrel opens seed after seed, their husks piling at his feet, as the flakes pile on his back. Hunger drives them forward.


Even the birds are wearing white.
The day progresses as it began—flakes falling, the outside world cast in gray.




By nightfall, the clouds had moved past.
Beneath a sky full of stars, we emerged from the shelter of our house, wood stove glowing warmly—and skied along the trails hearing nothing at all.
From the distant darkness, the call of a great horned owl.

This morning all is quiet again. The brilliant sunshine has prompted a dripping from the eaves.

In the woods, the branches free themselves of their weighty loads as I walk past--following on foot, our trail of last night.

The pebbly frozen surface of the pond glistens like a carpet of a thousand diamonds.

Around snowy boulders, the little creek flows clearly and swiftly.

Already the melting has begun.
With the sunshine warm against my face, I walk back past the quiet pools.
The air smells of spring.
Soon.

Swift wind

The wind is howling outside the window—
a roar that pulls and pushes until the very tops of the tallest trees of the wood sway huge arcs in the sky.
In the darkness, I hear them wave.


Several inches of snow have fallen in a gracefully sculpted blanket. Tomorrow there will be more.
As the greatest storm of the season—
many seasons,
dances across the land.


Swirling and spinning,
winding and wheeling.




A swift wind blows.

Window

Do you see them?

Reflections

Little pond pool, icy morning March 5, 2008

I describe myself as someone who watches the world—of a curiosity-driven character.
Pleased to focus my attention on that which is new, and unsettled when it seems not to be there—I’ve not learned to wait well.

When late last spring the nesting birds settled into their quietness, summer insects sprang to life—filling the lull with six-legged activity.
Every day continuing new, with so much to see.
Nature’s stream of beginnings flowing from one to the next.

Watching and waiting now, I feel a gap between winter’s end and the birds’ return.
A precious time for life.
It seems nature should have filled this space with something.

Wood pool, iced March 5, 2008

It is here, even now as the chill fights to remain.
The amphibians—frogs and salamanders.
The newness I seek.

Wood pool with Wood Frog egg masses beneath ice, March 5, 2008.


Little pond pool with Jefferson Salamander spermatophores beneath ice, March 5, 2008

Although I observed salamanders moving into these pools and heard wood frogs calling, 2 nights earlier, neither are considered evidence of breeding. Wood Frog egg masses and Jefferson Salamander spermatophores are biological indicators of breeding activity.
Vernal pools are defined by the confirmed breeding of these indicator species.

A special evening, part II

It really isn’t much to look at—that old farm pond on the top of the hill. Most summers it goes completely dry—the only water, rainwater and runoff from the small grassy ring surrounding it. Muskrats have moved into the banks, painted turtles bask in the summer sunshine, but with another “real” pond so close, this relative puddle seems unnecessary.


We’d thought, in fact, about flattening it several years ago—running a bulldozer across it several times would’ve given us a lovely expanse of field here.
Instead, we have what is probably the county’s greatest population of spring peepers—and a snarled mat of grasses lining a basin of cool water where a mockingbird regularly enjoys his afternoon bath.

A warm night rain falls here, following a day of unusual spring warmth—70 degrees. The ground has become an enormous sponge, saturated and oozing mud from countless mole holes erupting in the softened earth. Boot-sucking mud on a cloud-thickened night.

Unlike the murky clay-painted water in the big pond, this little pool is clean and clear. Squatting at the rim, my boots barely pressed into the soft edge growth, I can scan the bottom easily with the beam from my flashlight. It is brown and still. The only motion--drops of rain sprinkled across the black surface. They must not be here—the salamanders I’d hoped to find--tonight.

My ears ring with the thousand voices of spring—each little male peeper clinging to his water-level perch in his 4 by 4 inch world. They call incessantly, not concerned that I sit inches away, watching. Waiting.

My study pool is not this one.
I’ve stopped here only to immerse myself in the deafening sounds of so many, before walking deeper into the woods. And wonder if I’ve fooled myself into hoping salamanders will be here at all, in this area so rapidly changing.

Amphibians are an indicator of the environment’s health. Their permeable skins so susceptible to the toxins we spread on the earth, their breeding sites, the wetlands, disappearing daily, a maze of heavily-trafficked roads between them and their breeding pools.
Mole salamanders live solitary lives in total darkness, tunneling underground except for this brief period of nighttime migration to breeding areas—vernal pools. They are seldom seen except in early spring.
And never by me.

The rain has become heavier now, my jacket’s waterproof claim being tested—and failing. I can feel tomorrow’s cooler weather approaching in my chilled fingers. As I stand to return to the house, my flashlight beam catches the misty warmth of my breath.

On the berm behind me, he marches slowly forward in the wet grass.
A spotted salamander.
He has come home.
And behind him, nine more!

Spotted Salamander, Ambystoma maculatum
March 3, 2008
Butlerville, Ohio

Jefferson's Salamander, Ambystoma jeffersonianum
March 3, 2008
Butlerville, Ohio.