The peepers returned, the week before Easter. Trouble sleeping led me to crash on the couch in the living room late one night, near the warmth of the wood stove, and maybe because of being ground level on the west side of the house, close to the pond where they live, it was then I heard them. Through closed windows: still the end of March after all.
As usual, I couldn’t believe they were already back, with piles of snow remaining. The pond where they live is not 100 yards from the house. With the foliage still off I see it glinting golden in the late afternoon sun– probably the growing warmth of the spring sun that brings them back.
Are they brought back? Do they return from Florida? Are they mud hibernators? All’s I know, they are out there long after I think it must be way too cold in that pond, and return before the snow is gone, either on the ground or falling from the sky.
Inspiring and hopeful they are, little peepers. In a world of discouragements, of not much to count on but the unexpected, their drive to be and procreate feels so familiar, so comforting. Something to count on.
One unusually warm early spring day a few years ago, running the old logging trails up in back, I was maybe a half mile from a very small seasonal pond, one that pretty much disappears once summer really gets going. It is not very large and you might not notice it, though sometimes the transiting duck or two would draw your attention hanging out there.
There was this unbelievably loud sound, increasing in intensity the closer I came to the water– so loud I thought it was an engine, for some reason thinking, plane: a small hovercraft improbably had crash landed through the thick woods onto the water, landing surface all of about 500 square feet. Or someone had hauled equipment up for tree clearing. Or– peepers?!! I have never heard them so loud, and with such a tone, their whatevers must have been frotting back and forth with insane vigor.
Which brings me to the next question: how do they in fact make their call? So disproportionate to their tininess. Are there special peeper gills or vocal chords? WIkipedia has a decent recording of their call, link here, but I didn’t find anything about their voices.
Such a happy sound, for me, going back to my early years in Virginia fishing with my sister for tadpoles, creatures who both creeped me out and enthralled me, shape-shifting waterbound swimmers that would transform as amphibians.
Virginia or upstate NY, even in late March peepers=summer, and after a long cold bone-chilling winter, that is just one sweet, sweet sound. Having no illusions about Nature being a romantic Disney-sprinkled world of happy critters, nonetheless I draw a lot of strength, inspiration, courage, and sense of grace there, from the tiniest up; from the hidden, as well as from the seen.