The Pond

"Although he's already quite sturdy, he must be young. He's holding on tightly to the branch with his feet, not moving, as if flying exhausted him, and he's chirruping very gently." from "The Sparrow" by Jules Renard










The weather is poor enough and the trail still icy enough through its center, that I meet no one else at the Arboretum this morning.  When you pass the great Curtis Prairie in winter, it is not the abundance any longer that greets you, but the total lack of abundance.  The great restored prairie's abundance is its future potential, soon to come, of the spring migration of geese overhead, the rising of the Rattlesnake Master, the Purple Prairie Clover, the Big bluestem and the goldfinches that will trill at the approach of any feet.  You continue through scattering of marshland oak, silent as could be, more like sentries than trees. On toward the Lost Forest, the upper marsh turning to canopy, the trail, crisp by ice-molded footsteps, leads to another strangely silent space, Teal Pond abundant by ice and occurrence of virtually nothing.  As with the prairie, it is not what you do observe, but imagining what you don't -- the otter, the frogs, the snakes and every bird imaginable from the Wood Duck, the Black Tern, the Red-breasted nuthatch or occasional Blue Jay. I walk out to the end of the dock and, for better or worse, see the thick sheen of foot deep ice where the poles jut up from the bottom of the pond. The benches will soon be crowded again, the binoculars held tight to the eyes, watching for the red flash or the slow rotation of the head of the Great Horned Owl.  As I turn back toward shore, my weight shifts the wood of the dock just enough creek and moan, and the surface of the surrounding ice cracks and miniature shards slide for a couple of inches like tossed glass.