It was a crisp, beautiful day at the pond. The air was cool, about 46 or 47 degrees Fahrenheit, and there was just a twinge of a wintry bite in the breeze. Four mallards cruised the pond, but no other animal life was apparent. The Clark and the grounds were relatively quiet and this afternoon was one of the more peaceful ones I’ve spent at the pond thus far.
My goal today was to track the changes since last I’ve been here. I haven’t seen the site for over a week, the longest I’ve gone without contact the whole semester. I also looked at the flora to get a sense of the natural succession at Wall’s Pond. Where the site has been (it’s past land use and the plant life that used to exist here) and where it’s headed in terms of what will grow and thrive on this land.
Brown has fully pervaded the pond and its environs. No leaves remained on any trees and the bordering vegetation swished and wallowed deadly in the slight breeze this afternoon. I noticed that a twenty-foot section of cow fence had collapsed at some point since my last visit, just to the left of the main entrance area. The knocked-over fence and the brush that went down with it compounded the sense of deadness that the rest of the barren vegetation delivered from every angle.
I turned my focus after some time, to the signs of tree succession as they refer to past land use, in order to get a better handle on the site’s history. The red maple at the north end of the pond and the white pine along the south edge are the tallest specimens on the site, perhaps denoting their advanced age relative to the other trees on the site. If this is true, and the beech, hemlock, and sugar maple in the vicinity are in fact younger than the red maple and white pine, then, according to the successional trends elsewhere in Williamstown, it indicates that Wall’s Pond is situated on former pastureland. This fits with my hypothesis from last week and begs the question: what can be predicted about the future of the site’s flora?
Red maple live to a maximum of 160 years and white pine usually not more than 200 years.  If the two types of tree began growing at the pond at around the same time, it would follow that the white pine might outlive the red maple by a few years. However, the aerial photograph of Wall’s Pond from 1935 shows the red maple (or a similarly sized tree on nearly the same spot) and not the line of white pine. Perhaps all the trees on the site were hand-planted, which would blow any successional predictions totally out of the water, but, assuming they’re not, this former pastureland has more beech, hemlock, black birch, yellow birch, and sugar maple to look forward to in the generations to come.
To get some real confirmation and to put my hypothesis to the test, I tracked down the head groundskeeper at the Clark, Pete Richard, in his office behind the conservation building. He and his soon-to-be successor, Matt Noyes, spoke for some time about their experiences growing up in Williamstown, skating on Wall’s Pond (in Pete’s youth it was known as Leak’s Pond), and watching as the Clark grew up beside the pond. Pete admitted he did not know the exact origin of the pond, but guessed that a spring on the site had been widened at some point in the 19th century to water livestock – just as I had surmised. He mentioned that the Leaks and the Walls had raised cows and horses, respectively, on the L-shaped property in his lifetime and that the gentle rolling topography of the site was most likely an effect of the pond’s excavation and the subsequent deposition of material on the north end. Neither Pete nor Matt could attribute the white pine grove to any particular human hand, so the jury is out on their origins. Pete did say, however, that the red maple at the north end of the pond is most likely the offspring of an earlier red maple that stood closer to the water on that side of the pond. After 20 miutes or so I told him I’d keep in touch, we parted ways, and I returned to campus.

The late afternoon light was stunning at the Pond today. Clear, golden sun spiked through chinks in the steely blue clouds and cast sharp shadows on the water. The wind was high, gusting probably to 10 mph. It was not cold, only about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, but the wind and the light gave it foreboding air, as if though the prefigured winter was just behind Stone Hill and would arrive anyday. I parked my car in the usual spot and got out to survey my site for signs of former land use and the impact that human hands have had on the natural features.
Based on the surrounding terrain and its current use, my first inclination is that the terra firma on my site was at one time pastureland. The cattle grazing fields on Stone Hill are my firmest evidence, especially since they’re currently in use for that very purpose. The cow fence that runs around the entirety of the meadow, sections the area off as in a pasture, but the fence, lacking livestock to pen in, seems to be only for ornamental purposes and to divide the Wall’s Pond property from the backyards of South Street. The vicinity of the pond is obviously still maintained by human hands; the mower stripes that rim the pond and the presence of picnic tables and the bench under the red maple are clear enough indicators that the Pond is now a recreation site that is kept neat and not an abandoned pasture. Vegetation succession, the subject of next week’s blog will delve more deeply into the question of the former land use, but for now, I’ll stick to the effects of human actions on the land.
Aerial photographs from 1935 show the pond to be exactly where it is today, and to be roughly the same size as it is now. The stand of white pines along the south edge is gone, but the sugar maples at the entrance show up, as does a large tree in the vicinity of the current-day red maple. Meadows to the north and west of the pond look as open and uncultivated as they do today. The line of trees down the western fence is absent from the 1935 photo, but some sort of line is certainly there dividing Wall’s Pond from the field to the west that is now the parking lot. There appears to be a very slight color change between the Wall’s Pond field and the parking lot field, perhaps indicating the difference between a pasture area and a cultivated area, but the map alone is not strong enough evidence upon which to make a ruling. Next week, when I examine vegetation succession of the site, I can gain divine just what that field was once used for. Regardless, the field had a very clear path running through it in 1935.
The 1952 aerial photograph also shows a path or road running through the parking lot field as well as the first beginnings of construction on the Clark that was indeed started that year. The massive white pines that I see today are in neither picture but the hemlock stand to the southeast is present in both. Both pictures also show a tree where there is now only a finger of marshy border vegetation at the northeast corner of the pond. The pond itself seems unchanged from the Wall’s Pond of the early and mid-20th century, which suggests that the pond was not created as an ornamental feature for the Clark, which was one of my original hypotheses about its origin. The pond obviously predates the museum. I remember Professor Art mentioning in lecture that Wall’s Pond is a man-made pond, which stands to reason considering its placement among pastures. The practical utility of having a consistent water supply for cattle supports the creation of a pond near a pasture, and Christmas Brook, while it does not visibly connect to Wall’s Pond, flows past it and could, at some point, have supplied water to it. Regardless, the Pond has been around for at least 74 years, perhaps much longer. The Coffin Map showed no water where Wall’s Pond is now so perhaps the Pond was created by human hands in the 19th century. An investigation of tree succession will tell more.

video can be found HERE!
It was a mild and overcast today at the Pond. The breeze was quite calm and the air was a balmy 59 degrees – balmy, that is, for Homecoming weekend, rather a chilly time in the past few years. I had a borrowed video camera in hand and set out to capture a basic tour of the site and its environs for a video blog entry. The following is a written interpretation thereof that I hope will explicate some of the features I have been describing, up until now, in writing alone.
I moved first to get some shots of the two mallards patrolling the mostly-glassy pond surface. Today I identified both a male and female mallard – until today I cannot remember having seen a male mallard on the pond. The difference is most apparent in the plumage. The male is largely white with stripes of black and brown on his body and a dark green on his head to attract attention during mating. The female has more mottled plumage, she is brown and grey throughout, that presumably better hides her from predators. The difference is most apparent when they dive for food and the male shows his white underbelly to the sky for a few seconds. Here I have captured them from two angles, the first looking east from the west bank and the second looking north from the south bank. The first segment ends with a look at the huge red maple at the north end of the pond which has been leafless longer than any of the trees at the site.
I progress counter-clockwise around the pond from there, and the next few seconds of footage show the grove of tall white pines from the south bank where they stand. The white marble walls of the Clark’s permanent collection gallery can be seen adjacent to the pines, as well as a small parking area. The white building to the west is the Williamstown Art Conservation building which stands between Wall’s Pond and Stone Hill. The conservation building is usually responsible for most of the ambient light and noise at the site, especially at night, but today its nearly ubiquitous mechanical hum are absent.
At about a minute and a half I moved into the bordering vegetation on the southeast bank to show a small outflow cut into the grasses and weeds by excess water. The footing was soft here so I hesitated to go much further towards the water, but as the video pans across the far side of the pond, take notice of the “leaning” white pine in all its precarious glory. The frame lingers again on the white pines at the south end and then sweeps across the length of the pond. Next week will include a history of the site and some background information on past land use there – those pines are the tallest trees on the site, but it will be interesting if I can divine from photos and other evidence just how old they are and how long they have dominated the Wall’s Pond skyline.
The video turns next to the eastern meadow that buffers the backyards on South Street (the large brick building is Fort Hoosac, first-year art history graduate program housing and the site of my encounter with the hawk and the crows two weeks ago). The following shots again show the pond from the eastern edge. For reference, the area to the right of white pines and bare-branched sugar maples is what I have been calling, in past blogs, the “entrance” to the pond. The cow fence along the far side of the pond has also come into my entries in the past weeks. Populated with now-bare sugar maple, ash, and beech, this strip of woods was where my one close encounter with animal life came during my night visit to the site.
At around two minutes and thirty seconds, the camera turns to the thickest area of bordering vegetation around the outside of the pond. The plants in this area have browned considerably since I first saw them in full late-summer bloom, but they continue to provide a marshy barrier to the mowed and unmowed areas around the outside of the pond. The last shot was taken from the north end, panning south and east from the cow fence, across the whole of the pond, and ending at Fort Hoosac.

The skies over Wall’s Pond were unusually gray this afternoon. I tend to visit on the kind of day when photographers come to take pictures for the admissions prospectus. The wind gusted to nearly 10 mph and, though the air was a balmy 55 degrees, the wind made it feel, if not even that much colder, markedly more bleak. But a poor day for Williams admissions means a great day for Clark admissions and the entire parking lot was full with cars, motor coaches, and school buses. I picked my way through them to the relative tranquility of the pond and found myself, aside from four mallards that cruised across the surface, the only visitor at the site.
I first took quick stock of the foliage. The big sugar maple by the entrance had but a few leaves left on its low branches. In a week nearly all the ash and beech along the western cow fence had lost whatever remained of their foliage. The only color left along that strip of woods came from four now-conspicuous sugar maples, each of which still had the bulk of its leaves. The signature bright yellow color now caught my eye and I began my rounds along the western edge, deciding to make my general notes first, if only to stave off the inevitable gustatory investigation I was to make on this visit.
As I rounded the northwestern corner of the pond, I noticed a small flock of nine Canada geese standing in the eastern meadow. I became anxious to examine them in closer quarters and approached quietly and slowly, treading lightly around the flooded shoreline. When I was about 20 yards away, and could make out the strips of white and black on their bodies, one goose made a loud honk and flapped mightily into the wind. The rest followed immediately and I jogged over to where they were just as the last goose leapt into flight. They took off into the southeast breeze, flying low over the museum. I watched as they turned east and flew off over Spring Street, until they disappeared altogether.
Once the geese were gone I decided it was high time to get a better taste of Wall’s Pond; literally. Not quite knowing where to start, I knelt down and pulled up a pinch of grass and, like the cows, started chewing away. Not so bad at first, I thought. Bland, with a very slight bitterness. But clean tasting and smelling. Ultimately unenjoyable, though, and sure enough I spat it out (the grass actually turned my saliva a nice shade of Kelly green) after about half a minute. I decided I was not of the constitution to eat goldenrod or mugwort, my allergies being bad enough already, so I turned next to a benign looking sedge in the bordering vegetation and popped a blade in mouth. Similarly tasteless, the sedge was a lot easier to chew. Only for a few moments, though, and I promptly spat the sedge out, too.
I made my way around the pond, sampling various small shrubs with non-poisonous-looking leaves, all to the same conclusion: “people food” is better. In a last ditch attempt to enjoy this enterprise, I pulled down a twig and needle cluster of white pine at the south end of the pond. I tried a few needles, finding not much flavor at all and then stuck the ripped end of the branch in my mouth to try and get some sap. At first I was subtly pleased by a crisp, piney flavor, vaguely sweet and quite refreshing. Within thirty seconds or so, though, the branch became intolerably bitter. I tore the twig from my mouth and rushed to the water’s edge. Braving the risk of giardia (we’ll know in a week or so if this was smart), I dipped my hands into the pond and drank. The pondwater nullified the bitterness from the pine and I remarked to myself how clear and tasty is was. A little dirty, to be sure, but it hit the spot. Cleansed, I walked back to my car. I had, by this time, garnered a few odd stares from passing Clark patrons and wanted nothing more than to sink my teeth into the Subway sandwich I had left waiting on the passenger seat and wipe clear with Frank’s Red Hot pepper sauce all that nature had had to offer.

I’m not sure what I’ve been doing right but it has been yet another astonishingly beautiful visit to Wall’s Pond. I arrived at the site today a little before 3pm under perfectly clear, blue skies. It was a perfect 60 degrees with a mild northeast breeze that sprang up to a maximum of 2 or 3 mph, barely enough to knock the remaining leaves off the trees.
The last week has not been so idyllic, though, and since my last visit the wind and rain have totally defoliated the big red maple at the north of the pond and the two smaller trees right on the northeastern edge. The sugar maples at the entrance are bare on top now and only the leaves on the bottom quarter of the tree are left, yellow and dry, waiting to flutter the few feet to the ground at any moment. The vegetation around the pond’s edge looks similarly gaunt and desiccated today. Where there had been a late summer bloom of mugwort and sedge on my first and second visit is now a dry and graying strip of woody plant life, a shadow of its former glory. As I made my way around the pond I noticed several flooded areas at the boundary of the mowed grass and the strip of vegetation, an indication that last week’s rain still hasn’t drained or evaporated.
I haven’t seen the mallards in a few weeks, but I did witness a rather dramatic show of wildlife today, the excitement of which greatly surpasses the ducks’ relatively sedate afternoon feeding. In a huge red spruce across the meadow from the pond, on the Fort Hoosac property, a lone crow abdicated its perch overlooking the house for a moment, only to be usurped by a opportunistic raptor (my closest guess, from the shape of its tail and the white breast plumage, is that I saw a northern goshawk. The beak, however, seemed a bit too big for a goshawk, and from the Audobon guide I could not identify this bird with certainty. I seriously regret not bringing a camera along so as to exact a better identification.). The crow circled around and, discovering the treachery, began “cawing” incessantly. The crow gained some altitude and dived on the invading bird repeatedly, “cawing” with fervor, but to no avail. After a few minutes of this, the crow swooped off to the west, circling around a tree at the extreme northwest corner of the meadow and came back to the spruce with two more crows in tow. The three crows flew up over Fort Hoosac and, screeching all the way, dive-bombed the raptor who finally relented. The crows chased their quarry low over the meadow where I stood watching and didn’t let up until all four birds were well into the cover of the Clark West Woods.
After this drama played out I turned my focus to a tactile analysis of the pond and its environs. I knelt and ran my hand through the grass at my feet. It was supple and warm from the sun, with just a touch of lingering dew where the blades met the ground. Moving into the thick of the sedge and mugwort, careful not to sink in the soft puddles thereabouts, I felt the crackle of dead leaves and brittle stalks that had, only a few weeks ago, been so flexible that it was hard to pull off a stem to take with me. I continued around the south end, crunching through the masses of dead leaves, stopping now and then to grab handfuls and crush them even more, exposing the occasional wet spot or bed of soft pine needles. I swung around past the entrance again to test the water temperature under the big sugar maple where the shoreline is firmest. Without a thermometer I would guess that the water was in the mid to upper 50s – my benchmark being 20 summers of swimming in cold Atlantic water on Cape Cod.
Eager to get the crow vs. raptor episode down on paper, I took one more quick turn around the pond, stopping to take some audio recordings. On my way past the eastern meadow where I watched the crows drive off their competition I spotted an incredible sight: a lone Monarch butterfly alighting on the few remaining dandelions in the field.

At 9:37 pm I hopped in my car and made the drive out to Wall’s Pond for a nighttime visit. It was cold, about 30 degrees, and utterly windless. The sky was clear; I knew there was a sliver of moon up there somewhere but could never find it. The stars were magnificent.
I got out of my car and approached the pond slowly. There was some sodium glare from the parking lot streetlights to guide the way and lights still burned in the conservation building. Fort Hoosac, the huge brick house where the first-year art history graduate students live, was ablaze with electric light and it cast long shadows from the eastern side. I switched on my headlamp as I walked through the gates, heading at once under the big sugar maple to investigate the tilting white pine I had noticed on my last visit.
It was hard to tell in the dark, but there appeared to be no change. I poked around the southern edge of the pond, careful not to tread too close to the edge which I have learned is not always a clear boundary between turf and water. The stillness was crushing. The only sounds around the pond were my own footfalls and I quickly leapt out of the thicket at the southern end to take a turn around the outside of the pond.
I walked back to the entrance and turned north, walking up the western side of the pond and switching my headlamp into wide-angle mode. I had gotten about halfway up that western edge, when I heard a rustling in the strip of ash and beech behind the western cow fence. I whipped my head in the direction of the disturbance and pulled out my backup flashlight, flooding the tree line with sharp white light. Nothing. I waded into the bushes a bit, but still saw nothing. I switched off both my lights and stood for a moment, softening my auditory focus and tuning in for any sound at all. Nothing. Not a cricket to be heard, not a rustling of leaf or shrub. A faint mechanical hum from the conservation building. But from nature herself, nothing. The sense of intense stillness and solitude hit me again, though where it had unnerved me first, under the maple, now became a comfort. There was a certain measure of safety in the tranquility now and I continued my rounds.
As I rounded the northwest corner I swung my light out, scanning the pond’s whole surface from the highest elevation I could get. The lily pads were sitting on the surface, I saw no blossoms at all, and the water itself was absolutely placid. Again I strained for any sound at all. Something dropped from the top boughs of a white pine at the south end of the pond. No other noise at all. Just then, the college bells pealed out 10 o’clock. The man-made sound roused me and I continued my walk.
My light fell on the grasses at the edge of the water. In the still, thick air they were completely immobile, every single leaf was frozen in place. The harshness of my headlamp’s light cast a strange, clinical feeling over the motionless shrubs, heightening their stillness. It was as though the pond itself was an elaborate sculpture, a glass masterpiece, part of the museum, a work of art in which all the choices had been made and were now frozen in perpetuity. I probed the darkness around me for some contradiction to the freakish, empty silence. I walked quickly down the eastern edge, I even ventured off into the hemlock grove off the southeastern corner looking for something, anything to report. It was empty.
I walked back around the southern end of the pond to the entrance, moving quickly through the thick, dense air. I paused under the big maple again to listen and jot some notes. I looked up through the branches and noticed (finally!) the leaves nodding ever so slightly in the meager breath of breeze that had just sprung up. I watched them for as long as the puff held out, until they returned to stillness. Soupy, still nights like this are common in a New England fall, as are wild, windy ones. I’ll come back soon for an audio recording to capture the silence, because, in all truth, it’s well worth hearing.

10/9/09

As I walk into the environs of Wall’s Pond today, I’m struck instantly by the fiery red maple at the north end of the pond, which has begun to shed a large number of leaves and is now fully engulfed in an autumnal inferno of bright orange and red. It’s a cool day, temperature in the mid-fifties. The wind makes it feel cooler, though, and the steady rain this week has left the ground soft, moist and springy. The sky is a dull, concrete gray, and the chromatic explosion at the north end of the pond is made that much more dramatic in contrast to the slate skies.
Other changes foliage include a little more yellow and light orange interspersed among the beeches and maples along the west side cow fence and the maples at the entrance. The vegetation around the edge of the pond is looking a bit browner than last week, although the ferns and shrubs along the southwest shoreline retain the same verdancy I noticed in my first visit.  The water lilies and lily pads continue to dwindle slowly. They also look browner and there are far fewer closed water lilies than last week. Those that remain are all open, as if to gather up as much sun as possible before the cold really sets in.
The most dramatic shift from last week is on the south shore of the pond where a once-vertical white pine has tilted, Pisa-style, a good 45 degrees into the water. I walk over to it to investigate. It appears that the roots on the inside (pond side) of the tree have lost their footing, that is to say, water and time have eroded the soil underneath the tree and caused it to lean precariously out over the pond. It doesn’t look recent and I worry that I may have simply overlooked what now seems to be a very dramatic natural event. I can’t be sure. I wonder whether all the wind and weather this week perhaps exacerbated what was already an unstable condition for the tree. It’s not out of the question and for a moment I imagine big chop on this pond kicked up by a windstorm in the middle of the night, crashing endlessly against the tall pine and finally succeeding in undermining its defenses. A fantasy, to be sure, as there’s simply not enough fetch (surface area over which waves can increase) on this pond to raise any real chop with the wind we had this week.
As for “small things” I observed surprisingly few insects today. In general the occasional bumblebee or dragonfly joins me, but today my only winged companions are a few gnats by the shore and a solitary mosquito that follow me as I make my rounds. The bugs all move sluggishly, as though slowed down by the dropping temperatures and shorter days. I hear the low, constant chirp of crickets by the water’s edge but never see an individual.
The animals are similarly scarce, possibly put off by the rainy day throngs at the art museum. Indeed, humans are the most noticeable animal life in the area around the pond today; even the mallards are nowhere to be seen. I do, however, spot a small eastern chipmunk, about 5-9 inches long, flitting about in the shrubs along the south shore. Thereabouts I also see a good-sized gray squirrel that I later spot again, running along the fence that bounds the east side of the meadow and the backyards of the South St. houses. I wander into some hemlocks a few yards outside the fence separating the pond from the rest of the Clark campus, just to see what else I can see. Atop one of the hemlocks sits a lone crow, cawing. It flies away as I walk over, but another swoops in soon to take its perch. Among the hemlocks, some unseen activity in the high branches brings a steady shower of pinecones down on me and I soon leave the area.
I circled the pond several times before going, looking for anything small and alive, and finding nothing. As I left for the day I glimpsed two Holsteins roaming the field at the foot of Stone Hill, safely on the other side of the fence. A disappointing show for my site, to be sure, but I eagerly await a night visit and (hopefully) some more animal company.

Nathaniel Basch-Gould – Blog Entry #2 – Wall’s Pond – 10/2/09 – 10:15 am

It’s quite crisp this morning; autumn seems to be settling steadily in, one day at time. I’m sitting on the now-familiar west side of the pond, on a picnic table in order to avoid the dewy ground. The air is about 45 degrees F and there’s a slight breeze out of the north, about 1-5 mph. There is a tinge of cold in the breeze last week, and it’s certainly there right now. The difference is a general dryness, the beginning of the bite that New Englanders know is the mark of an autumn wind. The sun is just emerging through the pines at the south end of the pond, breaking the steely and uniform cloud cover and warming me as I sit.
The mallards are out in force! I count twelve and they seem more active than they have in the past two weeks. It’s as though they’ve finally shaken off the summer laziness that the college students are likewise trying to kick as the colder weather settles in. They dive occasionally and move among the dwindling lily pads on the east side of the pond.
Since my last visit, the water lilies have certainly diminished a bit. A few proud survivors are sticking it out, petals open, and it may simply be that today there is less sun than when last I was here, but the water lilies, which bloomed on the water’s surface last week are now mostly closed up or gone completely.
I see some new fauna today as well – namely two chipmunks at the base of the closest red maple on the southwest corner of the pond. I first notice them scurrying about the foot of the tree, diving in and out of several small holes thereabouts and nibbling on something white and fluffy. This gets me interested. Upon closer inspection, I discover twenty or thirty hunks of white bread scattered on the pond side of the maple’s base, left there, it looks like, by a human for the express purpose of feeding the local wildlife. This seems strange – the bread looks fresh and doesn’t feel stale. It certainly wasn’t there last week. I leave it, not knowing the impact it might have on animal at the site, but hoping it might attract some interesting visitors. Something will come by and eat it, I’m sure, and probably nothing that doesn’t already have business at the water’s edge. In addition to the chipmunks I catch a fleeting glimpse of a pair of small, black birds that swoop low across the pond one time and then disappear. I will keep and eye out for them next time, and will bring binoculars so as to hopefully record an identification.
The large maple at the north end of the pond wins the foliage prize this morning and gives away its true identity. In the week since my last visit 70% of its leaves have turned a fiery shade of red-orange (after double checking a leaf description online, I have at last identified this tree and those by the SW entrance as red maples). Only the lower branches on the western side remain green and not for long. It show, however, very few bare limbs so it must have another week or so before the mass exodus. The first-runner up in foliage is the smaller mountain maple by the water’s edge, just east of the red. Its leaves are a light orange and very few of them have fallen off as well. The rest are still green and well populated with leaves. I look forward to the coming weeks and the prospect of seeing them all go through their individual chromatic chaos.
It’s truly unfortunate that this week I happen to be sick and that my sickness is mainly a nasty nasal congestion because I would really have liked to smell Wall’s Pond this morning. The best I could get after many a labored sniff was the faint scent of woodsmoke from somewhere in town and a hint of mowed grass. For just two smells, though, these seem to be right for the kind of day it is; while the former pulls me irresistibly into the season of warm hearths and bundling up, the latter taunts me with memories of high summer and reminds me that the days when I can see green lawns and fields are indeed numbered.

Stephen Maier                                                                   13 September 2009

Wall Pond

As I am nestled in a clearing between overgrown grass and the banks of the pond the clock strikes three.  Wall Pond is bustling with wildlife. From the calls of a crow resting high in the branches of an evergreen to the perpetual chirping of crickets in the field surrounding me, I feel as though I am part of nature. The water of the pond is littered with lilies; the end of summer approaches and the pink flowers are in full bloom. They are putting on a show for the fauna that call this place home. A young bird cries for his mother in a tree on the edge of the pond opposite the crow. The life inside the water keeps up its continuous serenade as the clouds crawl slowly overhead towards the Clark Art Museum. The sun pokes its head out occasionally when the clouds permit and human visitors take advantage of the view when this occurs. A dragonfly lands on my keyboard as I type and departs when I touch the key he has claimed for his landing pad. A fly quickly takes the dragonfly’s place and then leaps to the screen panel and dances for me. As I scan the pond for its eccentricities, I notice two dragonflies mating in air while others find resting pads in the water’s edge’s flora. Among these plants are beautiful, tiny flowers with purple petals and yellow stigmas. Some tall yellow, grass-like growth inhabits several sections of the banks. On the edge closest to the Museum live more than a dozen trees with stature greater than fifty feet tall. Twenty minutes pass with little activity until a flock of ducks startles me while franticly escaping danger. The predator is a cute Labrador Retriever, chocolate in color, clenching a fluorescent orange toy in his teeth. He runs into the water and swims after the birds in an attempt that seems to be playful and amiable. He is totally harmless in his efforts, but the ducks cannot fathom this. They cry for help loudly, but it lasts for only a couple minutes. The dog swims back to shore and the ducks carry on with their diving below the water’s surface.  The water is still save the locations where the ducks are swimming and fishing. A visitor sneaks up beside me to capture the beauty of the site in a still frame. And another does the same on the opposite side of the pond. As I revisit the trees, I notice one evergreen in particular that is intriguing. It appears to be in the midst of falling into the water, but I assume this is the way it grows to seek sunlight amongst the rest of his brothers and sisters within his ten-foot radius. Nearly all branches are enjoying the breeze, as I am, but two or three seem to be taking a dip in the pond. Forty-five minutes have passed and the ducks are quiet, but the crow has returned and made his presence known and the crickets are relentless. For the past fifteen minutes I have been exploring different views and perspectives of the pond. All paint the same pretty picture: water lilies scattered throughout the lively pond, leaving the middle unoccupied, and plenty of company to utilize its valuable resources. The insects love the stagnant water; the ducks love the fish and apparently the lily pads; the dog loves the ducks; the plants and trees love the water; the birds love the trees and the worms that likely live in the wet soil; and the humans love the scenic portrait. If one were to glance at Wall Pond, he/she would assume there is not much happening. But to the interpreting observer, there is a whole new world that goes undiscovered. My excursion comes to an end as the clock reads four, and the ducks voice their goodbyes to me. I return the favor and promise to return again.

Nathaniel Basch-Gould – Wall’s Pond – Blog #1 – September 25, 2009 – 2:00 pm
Another beautiful day at Wall’s Pond. The sun is high and there are just a few fluffy culumus clouds off to the south. It’s about 60 degrees – a cool breeze from the southwest at 5-10 mph tempers the sun’s warmth just enough to make jeans and a tee-shirt the optimal getup. I notice that the construction around the town rotary has stopped and the pond today is much more tranquil than when last I was here, despite some museum-going lunchers at the picnic tables near the southeast entrance. What a day; it’s truly a pleasure to sit out on the eastern edge of the pond and observe the other changes from my last visit.
Walls PondWalls Pond Leaves at the top of the maple to the north of the pond (I could find no suitable identification in the Audobon guide, but will keep looking) have begun to turn a burnt red color. Likewise some of the beech and ash along the western boundary (between the parking lot and the pond) have started to turn yellow and red as well. The lily pad cover has thinned out a bit since last time, as well, and this time the closed buds that I had spotted on pond surface were open, and identified them as fragrant water-lily.
Some other flora that I have identified since last time:
– Goldenrod, growing copiously in the grasses around the pond’s edge
– True forget-me-not, interspersed occasionally in the pond grasses
– Mugwort, the dominating flora around the pond’s edge
– Arrowhead, in the shallows
– White pine, dominates the southern edge of the pond
There were several species of maple which I could not match to anything in the Audobon guide. With some more time I can most likely attribute them as well; perhaps deeper into the fall the color-changing foliage will provide some more answers. There was also a very tall (8-10’) grass or weed that had grown taller since my last visit that I was unable to find in the Audobon guide. It has bursts of small fluffy buds coming out at the top in clumps of three, with some errant grassy shoots all the way up the main stalk. Perhaps the internet will yield some results.
I was more aware today, also, of the topography surrounding Wall’s Pond. The pond itself is a mere football field away from the foot of Stone Hill, the major topographical landmark in the area, and one of the more prominent lookout spots in a town full of prominent lookout spots. The water level pond sits about 15 feet lower than the elevation of the parking lot (more or less even with the bottom of Stone Hill) and this makes for a rather steep embankment that runs all along the southern edge of the pond and about halfway up the western side.
The eastern edge of the pond, however, sports a much more gently sloping embankment that rises from the water’s edge about 5 feet (over a run of more than 30 feet) leveling off in the field that stretches around the eastern and northern sides of the pond. This slope continues around to the north, where, past the large maple and the bench, the pond-side field has it’s highest elevation – about even with the parking lot. To the east of this point, about 30 or 40 feet, is a downhill slope that culminates in the low point of the field, a trough, running about 100 feet from north to south and maybe 50 feet east to west, that about 5 feet lower in elevation than the water level of the pond. In terms of bodies of water, my experience has been exclusive to the inlets and harbors of Cape Cod, all tidal areas where even low points and hollows set well back from the beach hold a little water at high tide. It thus perplexes me that this point, which sets well below the water level of a sizeable pond just yards away, should not have standing water all the time. But, this is very clearly a different place with a different topography and I’m excited to get to know it even better.