Marsh life

An late afternoon excursion to an Audubon sanctuary in Natick. "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,' said Wordsworth about just such a day. A marshy pond was the middle of the sanctuary, shallow, weedy, green with pondweed; it looked natural--but life-less.

What a surprise then when first...

Looking from a boardwalk, I noticed a swirling motion in the green 'skin' of the water. It tore open and under the surface I saw a large paw with large yellow claws, stroking through the water : a snapping turtle, I'm sure. Obscured by the dark color of the water, it seemed huge and mysterious.

And then later...

Sitting next to the water to sketch and paint the scene, suddenly as snake, brown and striped like a garter, swam sinuously by, its body rippling like the waves it created. It headed into a reed bed and wove itself around the stalks before disappearing.

And finally...

A small commotion far out on an open patch of water, a splash, a shaking of vegetation. Nothing visible but something present. I turned back to my brush-wielding but the splashings continued and closer. Finally, I could see in the distance something protruding from the water. How I wished I'd had my binoculars. A few minutes and surface ripples indicated something swimming toward me. I reached for my phone to take a picture. Everything stopped. Silence, stillness.

Back to the painting when suddenly--and I had my phone ready--I saw the head of a beaver swimming generally toward me, but veering into a bank of vegetation which I saw shake as it passed through.

A snapper, a snake and a beaver. The pond was much more alive than I had expected. As a place of residence, I don't find it attractive but then, I'm not a swimmer and don't fancy what there is to eat in such a place.

No drama here, except that of revelation. How much more clearly can it be presented that each place is filled with creatures trying not to be noticed but actively going about their business nonetheless. Ecology explores the ways you three animals are related, benefiting each other and the marsh. It tells how you and countless other organisms, smaller and larger, are knit together in systems of long-term stability. But glimpsing you three on your errands much as I saw folks heading to the Farmers Market yesterday, and expect to see my fellow teachers off to the copy machine tomorrow, gives me a sense of kinship that's not wholly unwarranted.