We have consoled ourselves this July for missing the
wedding of a much-loved niece in California, by visiting Mint Springs Park
every evening. We go just before sunset,
late enough in the day that few people are still at the park. There are almost always one or two families
of fisher people, sometimes a pair of lovers stroll over the dam hand and hand,
sometimes mothers with small children play on the slides. Twice the owner of the scofflaw dog has let
him out at the top of the park to run, joyful and unleashed, down to the lower
pond. Every evening there is some surprise
waiting for us at Mint Springs.
One night we found joy in the birds. As we drove up to the park, a heron flew
round the pond to the far marshy bit where the stream comes in from the hill
above.
Red-wing blackbirds had flocked and nested here for many
years. Muskrats gnawed down the cattails
last fall and winter. This spring the
flock of red-wings returned, checked out the sparse remnants of cattails, and
flew on. This night we discovered two
nesting couples of red-wing blackbirds had returned to the diminished stand of
cattails. (Sadly, the muskrats, we have heard, have been relocated by park
people; their silvery v-shaped wakes always thrilled us.)
We walked around the pond, passing quietly behind the
flock of geese that often hangs out on the dam.
Though Canada geese are the hysterics of the bird world, they are so
used to us that when we walk behind them they barely murmur anymore.
Tree swallows, swooped over the pond, graceful streaks of
blue, and flashed their white bellies as they switched direction. As we rounded the pond to the farthest and
most remote corner, we spooked the heron, who took off from the water with
great, slow wing strokes.
A little further into the woods and we heard the cacophony
of a few coyotes. Their howls are high
pitched and eerie.
The sundown was the feature of another night. A line of orange sunlight shone over the
western notch and backlit the hills. Piles
of clouds in the east colored first gold, then orange, then rose, and faded into
dark gray. Reflections in the water were
brighter than the colors in the sky. The
crescent moon shone in the western sky.
Every night that I have not brought a camera, we have had a beautiful sunset.
Tonight we were tired and sat for half an hour at a
picnic table on goose beach watching turtles’ heads surface, gasp air, and then
disappear in concentric rings of water. We
listened to the frogs – crickets, green frogs and last, the deep voiced
bullfrogs. Dragonflies darted, touching
down to the water from time to time. Fireflies
rained upwards. A movement caught the
corner of my eye just as Ox said “Look, Jenny.”
A young raccoon, oblivious of us, sniffed around the picnic table five
yards south of us; he was poking around for supper. As he got closer to us, I got a little
nervous and we stood up. He startled, then
waddled with deliberate speed behind the nearest trees. He peeked out from behind a near tree, then
from between two trees, and as we left so that he could dine, he climbed up the
farthest tree.
