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.