Journal of a Sabbatical

April 1, 2001

the frog weather channel

Quote of the Day: "You stood in your doorway, I stood in my glove" -- Ferron

Bonus Quote of the Day: "They watch the frog weather channel." - me on how the frogs know it's still too cold to come up from the mud

Bonus Bonus Quote of the Day: "We are a mental angry people, and we are singing, singing for our lives..." - me mangling a line from a Holly Near song

Relevant hydrographs:

Shawsheen River - updated every 4 hours

Merrimack River

Concord River -- at the gage closest to Andover

Today's Bird Sightings:
Blithewold
bufflehead (4)
American crow (10)
American robin (a lot)
mallard (4)

Colt State Park
brant (600)
herring gull (700)
ring-billed gull (50)
great black-backed gull (3)
song sparrow (1)

Today's Reading: A Visit to India, China, and Japan in the Year 1853 by Bayard Taylor, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes

It's cold and gray. We go to Blithewold to look/listen for frogs. It's muddy there. We may sink ankle or even knee deep on this proto-road along the bay shore. Three yellow pieces of heavy equipment line the proto-road. Since when are they building a road here? I find a gap in the temporary erosion fence and discover the lawn, although muddy, is firmer. We are not likely to sink deep enough to lose any footwear. And this Ferron thing is obviously bothering me more than I thought. My first thought on seeing this yellow rubber glove in a pile of mud was that incomprehensible line "You stood in your doorway, I stood in my glove." Will I ever know what that means?

We reach the froggy area but detect no sign of frogs. The wind has picked up. Thin gray snowflakes drift down at long intervals. The wind goes right through me. The ponds in the Japanese garden are full to the brim but not overflowing. The cherry trees show no sign of buds. A squirrel chatters wetly in a false cypress tree. The sky gets grayer and the wind picks up.

I embrace a giant sequoia. I scan the trees for nuthatches or woodpeckers. The only sounds are the squirrel, the wind, and a distant mallard. No frog in its right mind would be singing its mating song on a day like this. They're probably deep deep in the mud at the bottom of the ponds. Nancy asks how they know not to come out on a day like this. Simple, they watch the frog weather channel. We laugh uproariously and drown out the wind. I try to work "frog weather channel" into all subsequent conversations.

The metasequoia, my favorite tree, is still bare for winter. It's all thick and gnarled at the bottom and wispily sparse on top. The red bark makes me feel warmer just looking at it. More snowflakes come. Nancy now believes me that it's snowing. I chant "Om mani padme hum" and circumambulate the metasequoia. I guess I'm a druid sort of Buddhist or a Buddhist sort of druid. Long live metasequoia.

Unsuccessful in our quest for frogs, we decide to look for brant. Colt State Park is even colder than Blithewold. The wind just whips in there. Even the brant are taking shelter. Instead of surfing on the bay, they're all (about 600 of them) but two floating serenely in the marsh on the other side of the bridge. The two brave ones who are surfing the bay eventually fly over to join the flock. A lone song sparrow serenades us and the brant. Even the gulls are hunkered down in a puddle. What the heck are we doing out walking?

This is April right? April in a cold climate where brant matter and metasequoia matters and frogs are sleeping away the winter waiting for that wake-up call from the frog weather channel.