A Sound You Don't Hear Anymore

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."