It’s been two weeks now, since I watched them walk.
And the night was much like this one.
Warm and wet, but, mostly…wet.
Each day, their eggs in the pools remind me there will be more to see, soon—but I eagerly wait and watch, hoping for another glimpse of the beautiful spotted salamanders in the dark water.
They hide themselves by day, so well, they might not be there at all.
My flashlight catches a glistening body moving across the grass. Hardly the numbers of weeks ago, but it confirms my feeling that tonight’s weather suits them well. His direction suggests he is leaving—returning to the woods, his social gathering disbanded for another year.
Little Pond pool:
Peepers, chorus frogs and wood frogs call loudly. The shape of the basin and my position within it contains the sound—a large dish, magnifying their shrill voices to the threshold of pain. The activity here can be felt—a frenzy of frogs.
The shallow water at my feet is clear, a grassy woven mat obscuring the bottom. But beyond a ring of dead stalks, in the deeper water, I cannot see.
Wood pool:
Smaller and stiller—this pool is the wood frogs' chosen.
They float effortlessly on the surface—legs splayed behind, eyes shining in the beam of my light. In the risen water, they seem drawn to me, scooting right to my toes to hover and wait. A large coppery female is laying eggs just beneath the surface.
Her smaller, darker mate fiercely hanging onto her back as she deposits the compacted black wad of eggs on a stalk of grass. By morning, it will have quadrupled in size as the protective gel covering swells in the pool to become the familiar shining silver masses.
At the leafy edge is a toad—quiet, but drawn here, too. Perhaps she waits for her mate’s call to find him in this extraordinarily dark night.
The water is pelted with raindrops, the oak branches guarding it, shedding also onto the surface. Rings upon rings dance on the wood pool.
The salamanders dance, too.
Slowly moving in the shallower water and hiding quickly beneath the dark leafy bottom as the light approaches, I count 15. Each popping to the surface to steal a breath, then burying themselves, again, in the depths.
Born of these waters, some perhaps 15 years ago, these solitary beings have found their way back.
To this place where, tonight, they revel in being a spotted salamander.
My thanks to Pat Rossmann for photos 1 and 4
--and for bringing a camera out walking with us on such a wet night!
