The maple trees have begun releasing their flowers, which means that their leaves will start opening any day now. The fuzzy, little red blossoms, many of which are self-pollinating, are the site of the tree’s seed production as well, which will be evident some time in June when thousands of winged seeds, also called keys, fall spinning through the air.
What we called helicopters as children are what make new maple trees possible, and sometimes a fair distance away from the parent tree, to where they are transported by the wind or by the streams and brooks in which they land. Squirrels, too, help with the dispersal, dropping some along the way back to their dens or from high up in a tree where they go to enjoy their treat undisturbed. A walk past the vernal pool earlier today provided more hints of spring’s official arrival, as the water rippled, indicating the presence of bull frogs and insects skimming its glassy surface.
It has come to me that those who decide these things want to shorten the distance between developed land and those bodies of water that nature creates when a stream or outlet takes a different route and fills in a new area. Such reedy puddles, bottoms thick with decayed vegetation, are home to hundreds of species of living things, some seen, others not. As still and undisturbed as they appear to be, they are hardly that, housing not only frogs and salamanders, but all manner of algae, insects and other aquatic life forms that provide food for other creatures that visit their shores. As summer’s heat builds, these pools dry out, and all the life within them goes dormant or seeks out other damper environments, until the first soaking rain when they burst into life again.
How odd that those whose job it is to protect such wild places should agree to this. How strange that those who are the most knowledgeable about such things would willingly limit the scope of those wet spaces that provide us with so much beauty, knowing as they do that the slightest disruption of life in these wild, wet places throws the entire natural world slightly off balance. When the tiniest life form that provides food for another creature is diminished or cut off, that creature is forced to look elsewhere for its nourishment, and often with detrimental consequences.
The Blandings turtle, of which much has been written, and the ringed boghaunter dragonfly are two species found in southern Maine whose futures are uncertain due to land fragmentation and the filling in of, or encroachment upon, wetlands. The boghaunter dragonfly breeds in wet areas, while the Blandings turtle spends most of its time in water unless it is searching for a dry area to lay its eggs. Both species provide natural insect control, keeping pests such as mosquitoes at tolerable levels.
Not only are wetlands crucial to the survival of many creatures, they also provide a place for water to go during periods of heavy rain or years of unusually high spring runoffs. Having experienced many springs here in this wooded place, I can attest to the fact that water never fails to go where it wants to, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. I have often wondered where it would all go after a week of heavy rains if it weren’t for the shrub swamp that sits at the bottom of this property, and some years, I have actually seen what happens when it has no other point of egress: It slices across this dirt road as effortlessly as a knife through soft butter, leaving great rifts that must be refilled before the road is once again usable.
If I have learned nothing else during my sojourn here, it is that there is a balance to all things in nature, and if one part is compromised, then the whole suffers. One only has to stand at the edge of a vernal pool early of a quiet morning with the sun just breaking through the trees to know this in a deeply personal way.
— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Lyman, can be reached via e-mail at rlovejoy84253@roadrunner.com.
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