Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about
Pond Life,
pond water, and the pond behind our house. With all it’s teaming life, it is somewhat like a giant petri dish of emerging life. From the smallest microbe to the huge snapping turtles who live in its depths, life abounds in and around it. So many birds, frogs, turtles and insects make a home there, or spend time there at various times of year.
All things are meltable and replacable. Not at this moment, but soon enough, we are lambs and we are leaves, and we are stars, and the shining mysterious pond water itself.
— Mary Oliver
I’ve been fascinated with photographing pond life at different times of day in different kinds of weather ever since the pandemic when I spent so much time at home enjoying watching the pond life through our living room windows. It seems that the reflections, light, and the condition of the water itself are constantly changing, creating beautiful watercolor like paintings that swiftly move and change.
After a few days of heat and sunlight a kind of thick scum often forms on the surface of the pond. It looks as if large bubbles form in the scum and then pop leaving a pattern of holes in the scum. Sometimes it looks quite unpleasant but at other times when the light reflects just so, it is astonishingly beautiful.
Visitations
Different seasons bring different visitors to the pond. I often think that pond life begins in early spring when mallards and wood ducks arrive and spend time there before disappearing to their nests. In reality the pond life never ends, simply transforms and adapts to the season. Migrating ducks spend a few days or a week in the pond during their spring and fall migrations. I’ve seen hooded mergansers, blue winged teal, northern shoveler ducks and more.
The environs around the pond become the nesting place for mallards and wood ducks every spring. I often see families of mallards and wood ducks swimming in the pond soon after the ducklings hatch. Sooner or later (sooner for wood ducks, often later for mallards) the duck families move on to other ponds or to nearby Medicine Lake.
I stand at the window looking out, trying to remember the truths that nature always brings home. That what lies before me is not all there is. That time is ever passing, and not only when I notice. That strife and pain are no more unexpected than pleasure and joy. That merely by breathing I belong to the eternal.
― The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year
For a month after nesting season is over the pond seems somewhat empty of bird life but turtles and frogs abound. In early spring the painted turtles sun on the log at the edge of the pond. And this year they began sunning on the log again in mid-August.
Seasonal Variations
In late July and early August this year we also had visitations from an immature great blue heron, an immature green heron, and an immature hooded merganser. For several days in a row in the early morning the young merganser appeared in the pond, swimming and diving, swimming and diving. I wondered what it was finding to eat in the depths of the pond. The young green heron came and went away again for over a week, often spending part of an afternoon either on the log or now that it’s often filled with turtles, at the edge of the pond.
Over the many years we’ve lived here I’ve seen Great Horned Owls on the log at the edge of the pond, wood chucks in the backyard near the pond, hawks in the trees near the pond, muskrats, raccoons, deer, and red fox in our backyard.
In autumn we often see groups of migrating ducks stopping to spend one or more days resting and eating before taking to the air again in their amazing annual migration.
Pondering Life and Death
Watching life emerge, grow, and even die in this beautiful pond is like watching a microcosm of the life itself. When I begin to be filled with despair about the state of the world or about losing friends and loved ones as I age, I return my gaze to the pond and the ever-changing life there.
Even now, with the natural world in so much trouble—even now, with the patterns of my daily life changing in ways I don’t always welcome or understand—radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world. I mean to keep looking every single day until I find them.
― The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year
When I consider all of the life this small pond contains and supports I am filled with awe. We humans are not separate and distant from nature and the cycles of nature. Indeed we are intricately woven into and dependent upon all of the myriad of life forms we live among. We are one strand of a myriad of strands woven together in what we call nature. Nature is not out there somewhere. It is in us and of us as well as in all that surrounds us.
Ordinary Interruption
I’ve been moving slowly this week, slowed down by a common cold, sneezing, blowing my nose, and feeling a general sense of malaise in my body. But the virus that caused this illness is a necessary part of the whole, not some nameless enemy to defeat. My body knows how to come to balance again without any outside assistance. And somehow I feel as if I needed this week of rest for quiet reflection. Everything that happens in our lives can teach us, if we take time to pause and reflect, noticing our thoughts and actions. For me, though I practice mindfulness regularly I don’t always notice the patterns that my thoughts tend to traverse over and over. And even when I notice all of my trying, figuring out, analyzing, and planning, it is hard to let them go and simply be. A week of needing to slow down and rest has opened my eyes to some of the many ways that I strive.
I have learned to think of rest as a form of waiting, a state that is both passive and active, resisting the urge to predict but prepared nonetheless for whatever might come.
― The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year
I am drawing this blog post to a close, surprised by all of the different tracks I ended up meandering onto. And now I want to end by sharing a resource I discovered last night. I am a big fan of Ken Burns and I watched a PBS show about his work last night. At the end of the program I learned of a website featuring videos discussions of Ken Burns with various American authors and thinkers. I ended up watching a video of Burns talking with Margaret Renkl, one of my favorite writers. If you’re interested in exploring the website you can find it at https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/unum.
Wishing you a beautiful September.
May you walk in beauty.
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