Blessings of a Vernal Pond
Blessings of a Vernal Pond
Vernal: Latin for ‘spring’.
Vernal ponds have underground springs. This keeps the bottom layered in mud which acts as a kind of coating to be a seasonal wetland area that can hold rainwater filling them up to form a pond. Buttonbush Pond, which I have been observing for the past five years here at my retirement community in Northeast Ohio, dries out in dry summers or in the fall, to become a fertile green field. There is no surface ingress or egress for water flow. It once had muskrats living here with a telltale domed stick structure rising above full waters.
One year a Mother Goose decided to build her nest on top of it, nest on a nest. Unfortunately, the heavy spring rains caused the water level to rise high above the muskrat den. Despite her best efforts to keep adding to her reed woven nursery, the eggs got waterlogged and never hatched. Other years, ducks have also nested on this pond, and they seem alright with unpredictable water levels. Traveling ducks often come down for a splash even when it is reduced to puddles surrounded by mud and burgeoning grass.
The muskrat’s telltale V-shaped ripples on the surface of this pond are gone now. Residents here did not appreciate the holes they dug around the banks of the seven ponds on our property to give them easy access to the shore foraging for food. Eventually, the pond edges tend to crumble and collapse. This makes for unsafe human walking and changes the contours of the ponds. I am sorry to lose the muskrats but the riparian zone between man and the wild creatures who were here first, are always in dispute. They were trapped and released to hopefully live a happy muskratian life elsewhere.
Today I saw a busy gray squirrel with a nut in its mouth. He stopped at the edge of Buttonbush Pond, which in October, is mud mostly covered in bright green grass. He began digging fervently in the soft black muck, clenching his prize tight in his mouth. I wish I could have told him his food would be underwater come May. But what do I know. Maybe he’ll find it way before that time, when snow cover is thin, and the dirt surface is not quite frozen.
Maybe next year the pond won’t rise that high and he has just planted another swamp oak to shed leaves around me in a windy ballet like the one surrounding me today. The shell will open, and the kernel inside will germinate. Roots will reach down through the fertile mud, advancing past sleeping turtles and frogs, down to the vernal source of this evolving aquatic environment. Perhaps a new tree will reach up to the sun, green and grand to become another tall guardian of the swamp.
A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the small observation deck of the pond, now consisting of only a few puddles from an overnight rain. There were pocked deer prints in the mud likely from a doe and her fawn I had seen in the surrounding woods. New fall grass here is rich in protein to feed them ahead of the approaching lean season.
Behind a tall stand of green reed stalks, I heard a low chuckle. Suddenly, three quacking ducks burst up flying in a straight line directly over my head. I saw their underbellies and water dripped from their feet straight out behind them onto my upturned head. I felt christened by the ducks. A blessed morning for me.
