I walk back to where I know the vernal pond appears each spring. I carefully peel back the thorns and prickly growth from my pants. The forest feels so wild and overgrown today, like autumn and winter offered no discipline, and the wilderness grew unrestrained.
I see it.
How does it come? How does it know to appear?
The salamanders, frogs, ducks, and what I’m hoping are turtles return and lay eggs. In just a week or so, you’ll look into this pond, teeming with new life in the form of croaking frogs and more slithering salamanders than you could ever count, and you’ll stare in wonder at what was once not here at all.
I love vernal ponds!
I peer into the water. Everything’s in place, but no living thing has yet come. Soon! For now, it’s so quiet, so still and reflective, and so peaceful. I balance on a fallen log high above the thorns and prickles and recall a girlhood by water. I keep thinking I’m way too old for this. I put one foot in front of the other on the log.
I do not fall.
Instead, I know I’ll be back to see what inevitably comes in this season of wonder, rebirth, and joy.