February 14, 1992
Winter was officially over for me today, Valentine’s Day. The temperature shot up to 76, frogs sang, swallows swept over the pond above the reflection of the first cumulus clouds of the year activated by the sudden ground heat. Small flocks of bufflehead, lesser scaup, and ringnecks have joined the resident wood duck, mingling and feeding on the corn scattered in the shallows. The pond is fulfilling its role as a roadside inn on a long voyage home. In the afternoon lightning ripped over the panhandle, visiting one cloud after the other, rarely reaching the ground but turning the landscape into a religious enactment; it had been six months since I’d seen anything like it. Later that night a second front, a cold one, moved south, pushing the cumulus clouds ahead of it and upsetting what had been a normal thunderstorm. Five inches of rain poured out of the systems, the worst of it at four in the morning.
At daybreak, high winds hugged the farm and the colors of night barely changed from black to gray. Hawks and buzzards scoured the wind, heads down, looking for a storm kill. A great pine leaned over like a sailboat and never regained its balance, exposing its roots and a great slab of bleeding earth, a wedge of red clay that from a distance looked thin as a skillet. Later, I walked through the woods and counted 140 uprooted trees, trees that had at one time or another pulled my eyes to the sky.
The sun burrowed through the clouds two days later, stretching forgotten reflections over the lapping surface of the pond. From a distance the rafted ducks looked like little old men. The clay was slick underfoot. The dam was dark green. “Black grass,” Bill called it. He had fertilized the rye before the rain. Dozens of yellow-bellied turtles took refuge on the free-floating logs that had risen from the bottom. The small male turtles swam circles around the logs and in a post-storm titillation of tortoise nerve cells desperately tried to mount the females as they hoisted themselves out of the water. The purchase wasn’t there, and they kept falling back into the rough water. The females stretched their long leather necks to the brightening sun.
This is the first serious rain we have had since the end of September, and I watch my pond swell into a different body of water, powerful because of the land it claims as it feeds on the runoff. The surface rises before my eyes and takes possession of the bowl we intended her to fill. The lake takes on the demeanor and abundance of a full-breasted woman. Four wild geese—two Canadas and two snows—plow out of the early-morning dew that clings to the window of my study. Not an exceptional sight in Texas but certainly one in Gadsden County, Florida. The big birds heel over, exposing their bellies before fading into the dreamy mystery that is fog. Soon a bald eagle begins working the pond, as does an osprey, four anhingas, and a pair of otters. The pond is fertile with storm-stirred life. “You must kill the otters,” they say, “or you won’t have any fish left.”
The osprey looks cold diving feetfirst into the water and missing brim. It falls in three times, each time floating on the surface, its wings cupping, flailing the water, finally rising into the air. Gator bait. The bald eagle makes a clean, legs-extended pass and departs carrying a bass in its talons.
The anhingas offer their wings to the wind. “Snake birds,” they tell me, “rake the scales off bass too big for them to catch. The bass die from the parasites. Better shoot them.”
I say, “I can always buy fish, but where am I going to buy an otter, or a water bird that swims like a snake?”