Video Visit: The Secret Pond

Two-minute video, narrated by Divine Bunbun, of the secret, intermittent pond below the silica cliff, a La Barque Creek floodplain area so loaded with briars, mud and vines that it is accessible only in late winter or early spring. The Secret Pond is the home of sweet spring peepers and summer skeeters, and is a watering place of all woodland creatures.

The Secret Pond

The Secret Pond below the cliff is accessible only when there's no greenery. Mid-April until November, briars and honeysuckle will tear your sleeves off, and maybe your face off, and the mud is like wet cookie dough and ankle-deep. Went down there today, while I still can. Beneath the cliff, although it was 60 degrees up top, I found the pondwater still frozen. See the picture for yourself. That's why I'm not hearing spring peepers yet.

Peepers (Pseudacris crucifer) are very common one-inch-long "chorus frogs." Only the males sing, thousands of them, all night every night, and it sounds like "sweet sweet"; some say it sounds like jingle bells. Occupying "semi-permanent wetlands" like the approximately-one-acre Secret Pond, their music is among the earliest and therefore most thrilling signs of spring.

One night a few years ago I was listening to them with a friend and said, "I wonder what they are saying." My friend knew: "They're saying: Love me. Love me."