EDGING MY WAY along the eastern margins of a peatland that is about a mile and a half long and variously a fifth to a quarter of a mile wide, I try to pass unseen by those traveling the busy roadway that runs along the entire length of the fen. Painfully close, the pavement is generally less than fifteen yards from the wetland border. I can bring myself to be here only by virtue of the extremely dense cover that occupies most of this narrow margin, a barrier of buttonbush, sweet pepperbush, sapling and occasionally mature red maple trees, a near-impenetrable woody structure made all the more formidable by being bound up in stout-thorned common greenbrier.
This cover shields me from a world very different from the peatland, which, with deep reluctance and many misgivings, I have agreed to investigate. I am loath to do suburban turtle work, but some individuals and the local conservation commission have asked me to document the presence and seasonal movements of spotted and Blanding's turtles. Road-killed spotted turtles have been found here—I saw the shell of a three-year-old—and the Blanding's are strongly suspected to inhabit the peatland and its surroundings. These two species are declining primarily because of habitat loss and are considered of special concern throughout their ranges. Proof of their presence might provide a bit of leverage to gain concessions from a suite of developers poised to press upon the entire western side of this remarkable ecosystem, some backing off that might spare a measure of the habitat margins. I have conducted such field investigations before and have seen my evaluations and recommendations all but invariably come to naught in terms of any truly meaningful protection. Pointing this out and elucidating scenarios from my personal history, in which "information/documentation" and "education" have time and again proven not to be the answer, I sought to avoid this engagement. (There will come a time when I can no longer become involved in such campaigns at all.) But once again a conscientious group has sought my perspective, and I have agreed, for the nature of this peat land intrigues me. There is also the fact that paid turtle work is uncommon and sometimes hard to turn down.
The greater portion of this boglike wetland is untraversable. I thrust my five-foot wading stick down into a pool surrounded by sphagnum laced with sweet gale, a rafting that shakily supports me, without touching anything solid. My course is dictated by a circuitous route in which I can find enough footing to sink no more than waist-deep and by my efforts to keep a concealing screen between me and the road. The growth in this acidic fen, dominated by leatherleaf and sweet gale, is generally no more than waist-high. By wading mucky channels that are not bottomless, I can shorten myself and thereby attempt to avoid detection by passers-by as well as by the turtles I hope to see before they see me. It is decidedly "advantage turtle" here.
My only other ally in achieving stealth is my customary trait of moving slowly and holding still for periods of time. Houses have been built on the upland peninsulas thrusting from the roadway into the wetland, and I feel all the more exposed to human eyes as I explore a backwater cove between two of them.
As I stalk turtles who may or may not be here—so much of the time I search for the invisible, and for much of that time the object of my search may not even be present—a shadowy, silver gray movement catches my eye. I make out a small fox in a welter of shrubs and greenbrier who is intent upon a grackle which, in quest of his own food, is tossing leaves about in a tiny clearing. With extreme, rather catlike stealth, the gray fox inches forward, employing the upland-border screen, as I do, to pass unseen, but he steals through it with consummate grace and complete silence. The coloring of his pelt is far more concealing than the camouflage shirt I wear. He is one with sunlight and shadow, the grays of the shrubs, fawn and sienna of fallen leaves, a beautiful ghost of a predatory mammal who is alternately there and not there even when moving. I am in a zone of open water and low-growing leatherleaf; the shoreline vegetation must block me from his vision. I freeze the moment I make him out, and he goes statue-still at the same moment. Does he sense me? Or is he reckoning his approach to the preoccupied but doubtless alert grackle? The jet black bird gleams iridescent purple and gunmetal as he goes about his foraging on the floor of the thicket.
The fox makes an additional increment of advance. With a burst of his wings the grackle takes flight and vanishes at once. A large bird for such confining quarters, he has his own ways of navigating branch mazes and weavings of thorny vines. The fox, who has been in something of a crouch, stands erect, on tiptoes even, his large ears also erect, and stares at the place from which his prey has disappeared. He opens his jaws wide and runs his tongue over his shiny black lips, as though tasting the bird he was unable to get hold of. Then he moves off a bit and settles himself in a small hollow at the base of a wild apple tree that has somehow found a footing in this narrow jungle. He curls up and wraps his tail around himself.
My back has become painful, though I have straightened it a bit at times and shifted my weight from one foot to the other when it seemed the fox wouldn't notice. There are only tiny windows in the mazes between us. He looks directly at me for a moment ... his face appears and disappears with slight turnings of his head. For seconds at a time, we seem to look right at each other. I look straight into his almost dreamlike eyes, see clearly his fine features, beautiful coloring, narrow muzzle, and sharp, black-tipped nose. Once again I feel that my own pale face must be conspicuous, out of place even. But he does not appear to make it out.
Across the road the woods are gone, replaced in the turning of a single year by fifty half-million-dollar houses, acres and acres of lawn set with forlorn trees left standing in isolation here and there, driveways, and wide avenues named for what once may have been there: Trillium Way, Ferncrest Drive, Birch Lane. Perhaps somewhere in the interior of the development a road has been named for the fox. No contribution to any architectural legacy, the houses seem embarrassed, standing in a twilight zone of suburban landscape, awkwardly, blankly, staring at each other across empty space. It will go worse for the fox when this landscape conversion is mirrored in triplicate on the other side of the peatland. He will be compelled to adapt even further, dodging automobiles as he hunts the narrowest wetland edges and backyards, mostly by night.
The fox and I are between two houses and not far in from the road. I look up over a mound of highbush blueberry off to one side to see a woman turning the pages of a book as she sits on her deck, which overlooks the wetland. I am extremely ill at ease. The gray fox yawns as he lounges in his open-eyed siesta. It does not appear that the woman will finish her book anytime soon. Not wishing to cause suburban terror, I slink in the direction of the second house, where no one seems to be about. It is so much easier for the fox to run this gauntlet, to slip the network of human eyes and move without being seen.
The difficult growth in this treacherous fen is too low to conceal all of my movements. I have been sighted. As I go on with my searching, I note the slow passings of a police car, and I understand better than ever why they are called cruisers. When I return to my car at the edge of the road I receive the company I was expecting. The black-and-white police car pulls up behind me and two uniformed officers get out. I am certain that my own uniform of black headband, camouflage T-shirt, and waders did nothing to allay the concerns of a crime-watch neighborhood. I am asked for my driver's license and social security number and then told to explain what I am doing. I state my mission and mention local contact people. After radio checks are made, I am thanked for my cooperation. There is one final question, which I had also anticipated: "What's with the basketball?"
As I left the wetland, I found a basketball that had escaped down Trillium Way and bounced far enough out onto the quaking sphagnum mat to prohibit its being retrieved and had decided I would take it home to give to some young friends.
"We thought maybe you had it in case you fell in."