Following the Water Page 4

  Larvae line each side of the outflow, hugging its borders, wriggling, undulating. They are sorted by size, with the smallest at the landward edge, the largest closest to the central stream, some cuts of which, though only an inch or two deep, are channeled into currents too swift for the larvae to swim against. At frequent intervals, both large and small individuals lose their hold in the navigable edgewaters and are swept back the way they came, until they curl against the edge again and find a lodging place from which to take up their arduous journey anew, falling into place in the upstream-inching column with near-military precision. Insects and water travel their respective ways. Time and place are graphically measured in these two tides, one living, the other nonliving. They both appear to be possessed of destinies. Resolute, but so small—one quarter to three quarters of an inch—the dislodged larvae face significant setbacks; but there can be no turning back.

  Though varying in size, all the larvae appear to be of the same species. They are generally the first living things I see moving in the frigid waters at the initial opening of the ice each year, when the division between ice and water is reduced to its finest point, a pinpoint in temperature, on one side of which is ice, on the other, water. A metamorphosis in the physical universe that has a profound influence on all living things on Earth takes place at this all but immeasurable dividing line. My first sightings of these living, streaming mayfly larvae often occur through windows of thinnest ice. In near-stationary backwaters or gentle drifts, they undulate through the water column. At this seasonal moment they have come to a common direction and advance along a watery labyrinth among the wetland niches that exists only during flood times. Living mats of larvae edge their way along lingering ice or wriggle up films of water so thin that they are no more than a glistening on the saturated earth.

  Many of the larvae are intercepted by other seasonal migrants, returning red-winged blackbirds and their companion grackles, who know the times and places of such abundant prey. Robins, attuned to this insect phenomenon, become wading birds for a time and feed on the teeming larvae, which are compelled by the current to run a gauntlet of shallows that barely cover their backs. But they are legion. Enough of them will reach the pool to fill the air above and all around at their moment of metamorphosis, perhaps no more than two weeks away.

  I take the water's course and go with the drift, with water barely moving, running little races, or standing still for a time, as it threads over and pools upon the land. At spring flood, water is at its fullest capacity for connecting the varied elements of the wetland mosaic I wade each year. It unites compartments that will later become individual isolated pools or channels and wet meadows whose surface water will inevitably fall away as rainy spring gives way to droughty summer. The unifying water of flood season is the medium that links me with all wetland niches, serving as my entrance into the wetlandscape and my conduit through it, my guide to the places of the plants and animals living within it.

  Following the water, I walk glimmering traces into a dense maze of alders, morning alders still silver-beaded with rain that fell in the night. They have yet to leaf out, but their lengthening maroon and gold tassels are one of my measures of the awakening season's progress. Little more than a surface film, the water in this alder carr is so shallow that I cannot truly say I wade it. Twenty-five feet into the alder thickets, the outlet from the great vernal pool joins an intermittent stream at its turning to the south after a long descent from a steep, boulder-studded hill to the east. The stream's life, like that of the seasonal pond, is timed to the abundance of rain and snow. Because it has its origins in a spring and because spring is the season of its most essential running, I call it Spring Brook.

  I look down this avenue of water, one of the most familiar faces of April: a surface sheen of white clouds and blue sky, crowded all along its margins by alders and silky dogwood; a length of water alive with wavering lights and black snakings of reflected alder stems; a passage of thirty yards or so through screens of warm gray laced with linear reds, the near alder and dogwood, to where it becomes lost in the maroon-gray maze of farther thickets. I take the day and its water and follow them into the season. Moving eastward, I wade into the morning and begin to track the day in the face of the trajectory of the sun that measures its passing. I cannot help but see the entrance that lies before me as an invitation. It is existence as invitation, as an entrance into an existence opening up before my own. In the blur of the stream, the alders, and the sky, time itself becomes a blur and I go with water that leads back to the past, on to the future ... timeless water.

  For twenty-five years I have been coming here to follow this same route of springtime waters. This is hardly a geological time frame, but I marvel at the constancy I witness. The water returns to retrace and reclaim its longtime runnings, slow flood drifts, and poolings. The alders hold their place. Nearing their time of metamorphosis, migratory mayfly larvae move against the stream, down which many wood-frog tadpoles will soon travel. Upstream migrants that in the past few days have begun to return for the season of the vernal pool include green frogs, bullfrogs, and spotted turtles. Individual spotted turtles have been making spring pilgrimages up this watery corridor far longer than I have, some perhaps for a century. Their species has inhabited the channels and pools of this wetland system (fewer and fewer remain that are this extensive and interconnected) since the retreat of the glaciers that carved its topography in the landscape more than a millennium ago. I wonder just how many generations of these turtles have made the journey upstream to the vernal pool at spring's flood-rich awakening, then back downstream at summer's advent and the time of low water. When did that first traveler to follow the retreat of the glaciers—there had to have been a first—head blazed with orange, jet shell adorned with a constellation of bright yellow spots, move up this clear flow so new to the world? I think of such firsts, so incomprehensible. I do not like to think of lasts.

  I pass a small chain of alder mounds a little higher than all the others, where every April wood anemones bow and bloom, reflected in the moats of clear water that accompany their flowering time. Like the vernal pools and so many seasonally flooded wetlands, this shrub swamp could appear somewhat tenuous, even transient. One could take an impression of impermanence from an overview of alder and sapling red maple and the comings and goings of its shallow water. And yet year after year the water returns, and the shrub carr persists. It is the water, however slight and seasonal, that shapes and keeps this wetland for its time.

  At the confluence of the spill from the vernal pool and Spring Brook I come to the first of two depressions in which the water I follow expands and lingers before its eventual entrance into and dissolution in the broad wetland mosaic, an interspersion of wet meadows, fens, marshes, shrub swamps, and swamps along the stream's course. This marshy pool is only seven strides across, perhaps a foot deep, set on eight inches of gripping muck. This is too deep and wet even for alders and sensitive fern; the pool has been colonized by reed canary grass, its seeds washed down from the vernal pool or transported on the backs of turtles, frogs, and salamanders. Long, intensely green, wavering strands of filamentous algae fill the narrow cut of the central channel, which the seasonal flow evidently keeps free of the entrenching reed grass. The algae form thick mats throughout the grassy zones as well. This pool, too, is alive with mayfly larvae. Here, given a comparative ocean to navigate, they appear aimless in their swimming to and fro; but eventually, individually and collectively, they fall in line at the head of the pool and, intent upon some higher water, the great majority join the formal procession traveling against the current. Some stay here until their time of transformation—or is it later arrivals from downstream sources that I see emerge from this minute pond as winged adults, joining those who rise at the same hour from the vernal pool?

  Over the seasons, certain days and times, not fixed dates on any human calendar, are my own holidays, constants within the season's variables: the Opening of the Water;
the Migration of the Mayfly Larvae; the Return of the Red-winged Blackbirds; the Arrival of the Frogs and Salamanders; the Time of Spotted Turtles Migrating; the Dance of the Mayflies; and, tightly cued to this, the Return of the Tree Swallows ... So many, the litany goes on throughout the sequence of the seasons, to times of departures and the Turning of the Red Maple Leaves; the First Thin Ice; First Snowfall; the Long Winter Quiet. These are my holy days, set in the calendar of the seasons. Though regulated by the sun and the moon and the spinning of Earth, they are not limited to any twenty-four-hour period; there is no affixing a number to them. I mark these times as I see them with a common denominator: "Again."

  I move on with the water sliding by. It is only at this time of year, and only along this particular intermittent stream, that I literally follow the water. I must walk east into the sun, which makes it hard to see. And wading with the current stirs up obscuring clouds of mud that billow ahead of me. Although this is no swift current, it exceeds my deliberate pace, which is broken up by many lingering pauses. Almost invariably I plan my routes so that I go west and

  Study of reed canary grass.

  upcurrent in the morning, east and upcurrent in the afternoon. These routes greatly enhance my chances of seeing before being seen. But during this time of water moving everywhere, and migration, I make this downstream journey day after day. The season and my sense of place compel me to go the way the water flows—a sentiment reinforced by the likelihood that I will, more days than not, intercept a spotted turtle or two traveling toward me.

  My eyes are challenged by the bright reflected light of the sun thrown off by the water. Overcast days are worse, even with the sun at my back, for the mirror of sky glare is constant from any angle. I tried wearing polarized sunglasses, but water and light, surface and interior depths, became even more confusing. And the smoky lenses put me at a remove from near and distant landscapes. Somehow even sparrows and warblers singing at my ear seemed farther away. I lost something of the immediacy of my own wading feet and felt as though I were traveling in a bus with tinted windows. I have difficulty with binoculars as well. Although they are necessary at times in order to make a specific turtle identification, my eyes do not take well to them, and I am seldom in a situation that grants long-range sightings anyway. In order to really see, I need unaided eyes.

  Over the course of more than fifty years of wading wetlands, my eyes have become specialized, adapted to seeing into the water, penetrating its reflective surface, reading its interior depths and the mazes of vegetation within it, the leaf packs, branch tangles, mud, sand, cobble, and stone beneath. My artist wife, who often paints swamps and marshes, urges me to put more blue into my own watercolors of wetlands. I reply that when I look at water I never really see blue. Perhaps because I am nearly always in the water, not looking at it from above, I see black and white, amber-gold, bronze, and dark tea. Often I see no color at all, only transparency; I see the things within the water as though they were suspended in thin air.

  One time when we were both looking into the grassy vernal pool in early spring, my wife remarked on the brilliant, intense blues on the water, made all the more blue by its framing of straw gold reed canary grass. At that point I suddenly saw the color, reflected bits of sky scattered about the pool. As I squinted to keep my focus on the surface I saw blue everywhere: a dazzling Byzantine mosaic of cobalt, lapis lazuli, cerulean, and ultramarine. After a while, though, I had to make a visual adjustment in order to see into the water again.

  On another occasion, when I took my wife on a wade into the bewildering blendings of water and growth, reflections and penetrations of light, overhanging and submerged tangles and sprays of grass, sedge, and shrub, she found it virtually impossible to make out a pair of spotted turtles in courtship who were oblivious to us as they moved about at our feet.

  "One rarely gets such a good look at them," I whispered.

  She said, "I would never find turtles."

  In an atmosphere of warmth and light that is still new to the season, a remembered dream I get to relive one more time, I continue along Spring Brook. A soft sheen of sunlight, warm in color, warm to the feel, reflects from dry leaves strewn over wet earth and from the smooth or speckled bark of endless stems and branches. It is not sharply focused and blinding, like light off snow or water, but an ambient, mesmerizing glow. Here and there along the brook's low banks are vibrant accents of yellow-green where sphagnum moss fills wet hollows and creeps over sodden logs and hummocks. A striking emerald green moss cushions the footing of each red maple sapling. Silky dogwood branches streak the warm gray haze of other leafless shrubs with crimson and maroon. The floor of the alder carr is a sun-bleached blur of fawn, ocher, sienna, light purple-grays, and gray-greens. It is wonderfully exhausting to try to encompass these lights and colors, to search them, and all the while try to read the alternately transparent and sky-reflecting water that threads among them. Lodging myself among some sturdier alders that incline over the stream, I rest, waiting and watching.

  The midday hour becomes silence and stillness. I slow all the more into the day. I hear an animal chewing. With a gradual turning of my head I scan for the source of the only sound near me. Not more than half a dozen strides away, a snowshoe hare nips the tips of an evergreen sedge's glossy blades. Whiskers twitching, he works his lower jaw vigorously. Other than that he, too, is motionless. His fur, though still marked with patches of winter white, has almost entirely gone over to the earth tones of his summer coat. He is well suited to pass unnoticed in his surroundings. Without making a sound in the dry leaves, he hop-walks a few more yards and settles down to nibble the points of another long sedge. Behind me I hear another animal scratching himself, almost certainly another hare. I twist a bit to track this sound and make him out, hunkered down on the tawny-leaved floor of the alder carr, immobile, his eyes half closed. He looks for all the world to be daydreaming, a luxury one would think his hunted, scampering kind could rarely afford. It seems that spring holds even these quick-footed ones in its spell. On the verge of an explosive full awakening, the season drowses. I feel only half awake myself.

  The hare's somnolent repose belies his alertness. His nose wriggles continually, his sides reveal his rapid breathing. His erect long ears never stop turning, scanning the four directions, listening to the world. No doubt these hares have been well aware of me and have tracked my passage down the brook. I wonder at what distance their ever-listening ears first detected my approach. I think my repeated passings here have made me a nonthreatening part of their world. They know my scents and sounds, my form; they are used to me, and as long as I keep to my familiar rounds at my customary unmenacing pace, they will be at ease having lunch and taking naps all but within my shadow. Neither one moves as I extricate myself from my leaning place in the alders and resume my walk.

  The fertile fronds of the sensitive fern, suggestive of the buttoned tail ends of rattlesnakes, set loose clouds of spores as I brush through them in crossing a backwater pool, dusting the water with a rust-red coating. The ferns have not yet raised new foliage, but their fertile fronds stand throughout the intermittent stream's course, clearly delineating its route among the alders. Sensitive indeed, this fern is burned by the lightest touch of frost in autumn and is late to unfurl its new green croziers, lest it be caught by the late frosts of a northern spring. By late May I will wade a thigh-deep swath of this wetland fern, making the dwindling water beneath it all the harder to search.

  In scanning a pool-like run of the brook, below a sparkling braid that plays over a narrows formed by buttressing roots of red maples gnarling out from both banks, I see the tranquil surface come to life. There are swirls and ripples, and then the surface becomes still once more. Another disturbance riffles the sheen of reflected sky. These are surely the movements of a spotted turtle. As clear and shallow as the water is here, the distance and angle make it impossible for me to see into it. A dark head, its face radiant orange, appears and disappears. I see a dark s
hape moving, bearing brilliant yellow spots. And now another, suddenly overtaking and heading off the first. I have come upon a pair of spotted turtles, travelers who are combining a spring migration with a courtship chase. They have no doubt been feeding along the way as well, at least until the male caught sight of the female and became oblivious to everything else.

  The object of his attention appears interested only in feeding and proceeding upstream even as the male makes clear his own intent of intercepting her. These conflicting purposes slow the process considerably, but the journey continues. I once saw a merry band of four spotted turtles, two of each sex, on such a springtime migration-cum-courtship chase, and although it was a somewhat unruly procession, it seemed as if it should be accompanied by stately Renaissance dance music. This day's couple travels to the faint rippling murmur of the stream-braid and a nearly incessant sequence of songs coming up from redstarts, yellowthroats, and yellow warblers in the brook-side thickets. Whether or not they take time for a coupling, these turtles will be in the vernal pool before sunset.

  I continue downstream along the nearly level run of this seasonal brook to the second ponding, which I call the tussock sedge pool, for the cushionlike mounds of the sedges that emerge from its deepest trough. This ten-by-thirty-yard depression serves as a way station for me; it is one of my signal watching places at the time of spring migrations and is a halfway house for the spotted turtles as well. Although their ground or, I should say, water time here is generally brief, the pool is an important hiding, foraging, and sometimes mating place for them. For a couple of weeks out of the entire season I find the turtles here, sometimes four or six in a day. I rarely see them here outside of this narrow window.