Two Places

Mint Springs

More than a week ago we walked around the pond at Mint Springs Park.  It was almost dark.  Spring had come to the park showing itself first in the beautiful blossoms of the park’s fruit trees, light against the looming darkness, and then as the eye sharpened, in the soft and feathery look of the hardwood trees on the hills; a few weeks before the hills had looked hard and brushy.

We listened to the mating trill of the small American Toad.  The trill, sounded continuously around the pond except wherever we were; it is a sharp and musical sound, at several closely related pitches.  The small toads roiled the water in the place between the cattails and the bridge to the children’s beach. 

  

A week or two before last week the goose flock had broken into couples.  Now the others left the pond to one couple at the upper pond and one at the lower pond.  In each couple the gander, with pale breast and upright neck, guarded the goose who fed without cease on the turf.   We always talk in low peaceful voices to the couple as we cross the dam.  The geese remain in place but hum anxiously to each other.  A car driven by a scofflaw, drove to the highest point of the park, by Shelter Two, and a dog jumped out the window.  Nothing looks as joyful as a dog freed of its bonds.  The dog ran down to the parking area, defecated, and then ran down and out of sight towards the entrance to the park, followed closely by his owner’s car.  When the dog drew near the geese they squawked  hysterical squawks and flew to the middle of the pond.  We can always count on geese to provide drama.

We thought we saw the wake of the resident muskrats.  They are shy creatures who show themselves towards dark.  The muskrats have taken possession of the beaver lodges left behind when the beavers were relocated a few years ago.

Assateague.   

Today we are staying at Chincoteague and visiting Assateague.  The contrast with our park is overwhelming.  This place is as beautiful as the park.  We drive to Assateague in daytime to look at the ocean and the  birds and in the evenings to gawp at the sunsets.   After many years of consulting Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds, and a few years of consulting Sibley’s, I am still confused by sandpipers, plovers, and ducks.  I’m beginning to sort out the gulls with the help of a list of visiting birds that the NPS posts at the ranger station.  The commonest gulls are the elegant black, gray, and white Laughing Gulls.  These gulls fish the waters in Assateague Channel between Chincoteague and Assateague.  They pose, placed equidistant on the bridge across the channel, tipped forward at just the same angle to spot the fish.  On the beach they face into the wind and the sun.    

The egrets seem more collegial these days than they were.    A pool in the brackish channel on the way to the ocean hosts a variety of egrets.  We’ve seen the beautiful Great Egrets, mingled with Snowy Egrets in the pool, and perched on nearby trees..  The latter have black bills and black legs with yellow toes (to lure careless fish I think).   An occasional squat Cattle Egret hangs out in the pool.  At this season,, the mating plumes of these birds blow gracefully in the wind. The species have no trouble getting along when the fish are abundant.  The Great Blue Heron is more solitary; herons fish by themselves, widely spaced.  They are much rarer than the egrets.

The Snow Geese are here too. We have seen migrating flocks of these birds in mesmerizing murmurations.  The birds are not here in such great numbers this spring, but they still transfix the viewer when they fly close together.  They swirl and dip in beautiful patterns, picked out by the light.  Their patterns remind of the swirls of schools of fish.

Pine bark beetle periodically attacks the pines here.  The pine bark infestations kill local pines, which die and rot, enriching the earth.  Young pines spring up, become infected and die.  The cycle is old.   An area along the road to the beach has been bulldozed – it’ll eventually be an area for penning the ponies.  The area looks devastated – as if a developer has had his way here.  The infested pines have been cut down and hauled away. 

 

The last strong storm that hit Assateague this winter swept away much of the parking area at the beach along with the beach sand.  The sea is eating away at this island.  Now the old parking area is closed for giant earth-moving equipment to do repair work.  Huge piles of red dirt and oyster shells line the old parking area.  A small parking area is open to the north of the old one.    Slightly north of that parking place, signs and ropes close off the threatened Piping Plover's nesting site.

    

Assateague is a barrier island run by the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Chincoteague Firemen.  The firemen run the famous Chincoteague ponies.  The Nature Conservancy owns a large part of the north of the island, which is off limits to tourists.  Assateague is a complicated jurisdiction.

Misty of Chincoteague  was published in 1947 when I was eight,  but  I never read the book. Though I enjoy seeing them often this trip, I’m underwhelmed by the Chincoteague wild ponies.  They are penned sometimes, they are fed when forage is scarce, they are rounded up twice a year for medical checks and vaccinations, and the herd is culled for auction once a year every summer.   They don’t seem very wild.  The ponies and the beach are vital to the economic survival of Chincoteague.  Chincoteague survives on its tourists and its watermen.  For the most part people live here because they love the place.

The wind has been strong this last week and the weather cold.  We had one day and one afternoon of rain.  The colors of the ocean vary with the light.  It has been dark blue, teal, lime green, and pale mint with breakers and reflections tinted peach from the setting sun.  The wind makes a white veil up from the breakers.

I love these two places.  Getting to know them soothes my itchy feet.  Perhaps I'll inhabit some other paradise in some other life.  These are enough for this one.