In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Back to the Pond  21 Back to the Pond  I shiver in the damp breeze, but I can’t bring myself to close the window on this April night that is sliding off the cusp of winter into spring. The faint sound of the peepers flows in with the cold air, but it’s not enough. I need more. So I go downstairs and slip my down jacket over my nightgown, slide bare feet into my Sorels and leave the woodstove’s warmth behind in the kitchen. With bootlaces dragging through patches of remnant snow, I tromp up to the pond above the farmhouse, breathing in the scents of wet ground. I’m pulled by the sound. Coming closer feels like walking into a crescendo, rising with the chorus of voices. I shiver again. The air literally throbs with the massed calls of peepers, vibrating the nylon shell of my jacket. I wonder at the power of these calls, bringing me from sleep and bringing the peepers back to the pond. Do we share some common language that draws us both to this place? The peepers have their own plan. What is it that brings me here to stand like a rock in this river of sound? Their ringing calls summon all the local peepers to this gathering place, for mass fertilization in the rites of spring. Females will squeeze their eggs out into the shallow water, where males cover them with milky drifts of sperm. Surrounded by a gelatinous mass, the eggs will mature to tadpoles and become adult frogs by summer’s end, long after their parents have hopped back to the woods. Spring peepers spend most of their adult lives as solitary tree frogs, travelling the forest floor. As far afield as they may venture, they must all return to water to reproduce. All amphibians are tethered to the pond by their evolutionary history, the most primitive vertebrates to make the transition from the aquatic life of their ancestors to life on land. Mosses are the amphibians of the plant world. They are the evolutionary first step toward a terrestrial existence, a halfway point between algae and higher land plants. They have evolved some 22  Gathering Moss rudimentary adaptations to help them survive on land, and can survive even in deserts. But, like the peepers, they must return to water to breed. Without legs to carry them, mosses have to recreate the primordial ponds of their ancestors within their branches. The next afternoon, I return to the now quiet pond, looking for some marsh marigolds to cook up for dinner. Bending to gather the leaves, I see the aftermath of last night, masses of eggs lying in the sunlit shallows. They’re entangled with green algae whose surface is studded with tiny bubbles of oxygen. As I watch, a bubble shimmers toward the surface and breaks. The traditional knowledge of the Zuni people tells that the world began as clouds and water until the marriage of earth and sun bought forth green algae. And from the algae there arose all the forms of life. Scientific knowledge tells us that, before the world was green, the only life was in the water. In shallow bays, waves broke on an empty shore. The sunbaked continent was without a single tree to make a pool of shade. The early atmosphere had no ozone, and the sun’s full intensity beat down on the land, a deadly rain of ultraviolet radiation, damaging the DNA of any living thing that ventured up on the shore. But, in the sea and inland ponds where water screened out the UV rays, algae were busily changing the course of evolutionary history, as the Zuni story explains. Oxygen bubbled from the algal strands, the exhaust fumes of photosynthesis accumulating molecule by molecule in the atmosphere. Oxygen, this new presence, reacted with strong sunlight in the stratosphere to produce the ozone layer that one day would shelter all terrestrial life under its umbrella. Only then did the surface of the land become safe for the emergence of life. Freshwater ponds provided easy living for green algae. Supported by the water itself and constantly bathed in nutrients, the algae had no need for complex structure, no roots, no leaves, no flowers, simply a tangle of filaments to catch the sun. Sex in this warm bath was easy and uncomplicated. Eggs released from slippery strands floated aimlessly about, and sperm were released freely into the water. New algae would...

Share