Summer Sunrise at Cottonwood Pond
August 4, 2015
The early morning was beckoning.
The sky was showing signs of dawn, just
barely lighting. When I stepped out onto the screened-in porch, I
heard a Mourning Dove coo, then the Pewee calling its name, and an
Eastern Towhee just waking up, giving its morning instruction “Drink
Your Tea!”
I heard a gentle roll of distant
thunder. The sky would not be too bright this morning, as dark
billows of clouds rolled in.
The rest of the human world was barely
waking up, as I heard the first sounds, from the distant highway, of
people rushing to work.
I grabbed my field notebook, camera and
binoculars and headed to Cottonwood Pond.
From above, at the edge of the woods, I
saw bright orange streaks across the ground.
They were remarkable, like strips of
blazing fire climbing up the slope – or even like bright orange
day-glo paint sprayed onto the leaf litter. I stepped on a stripe and
the orange spread across my shoe.
The source of the stripes was ahead,
just at the horizon on the other side of the woods, peeking through
the trees. As I slowly ascended, imperceptibly, its glow pierced the
woods like an intense orange spotlight.
Cottonwood Pond was calm and quiet,
save for some birdsong and calls. The Creek was a trickle, barely
dancing over obstacles. There was still some water in the Pond.
(This is, truly, my favorite time of
day.)
I went to sit on the Fungi-Covered Log,
which stretches up the slope above the base of the Barkless Log. This
was the same observation point I used at dusk and night back in late
July, 2013 (see “Night and Day”.)
Orange streaks were lain across the
dense cover of Jewelweed. I noticed only one bright orange Jewelweed
blossom, the same color as the rising sun.
In the distance, through the woods, I
saw what looked like spots of fire in the trees. But, it was the
rising sun again, penetrating the darker woods in intermittent spots.
As the sun rose a bit more, its orange
intensity yielded to a bright white glare, and the orange streaks on
the ground gradually faded.
On my observation log, Pester, who had
followed me down, did his early morning grooming.
Near my observation point on the
Fungus-Covered Log were also:
Turkey Tail fungus on the log
An early-fallen Black Walnut
fruit
A Hackberry sapling
A white light had started to spread
across the horizon as most of the sun was then peeking over it. I
heard the chatter of Squirrels waking up and a complaining call of a
Red-Bellied Woodpecker. Another Woodpecker was loudly pounding on a
nearby tree, starting its work early.
Birdsong was becoming more varied as
Cardinals sand and a Pewee called repeatedly. I heard the descending
twitter of a Field Sparrow emanating from the edge between woods and
farm field.
From the road on the other side of that
field came a sudden loud roar as a driver revved up and took off,
possibly running late to work. The sound of traffic was increasing
from the highway. People were also driving to the schools not
far from here.
I heard the plunks of nut-fall on the
woods floor, and thunder rolling in closer.
I took up my binoculars.
Pale specks of Sharp-winged Monkeyflower blooms glowed in the filtered light among a single Jewelweed flower.
Next to Cottonwood Pond, branches of
Elderberry were drooping with the weight of developing fruit.
The north corner of
Cottonwood Pond, with the Mud Pile, Isthmus and Seep, quiet and
densely green.
In a little recess on the Root Ball
Bottom was a faint row of parasol-shaped mushrooms with a taller
parasol next to them. They looked like a line of umbrella-carrying
children descending a sloped road, accompanied by their teacher
carrying a larger umbrella. I couldn't help but think of Miss Clavell
and her schoolgirls in the Madeleine books: “twelve little girls in
two straight lines ...”
The Cove under the Root Ball was very dark.
As the sun rose further and light
increased, bird song increased in number and loudness. The woods was
waking up.
I heard a loud bang as a nut fell on
the metal barn roof to the west.
Crickets began chirping.
Black-winged Damselflies began to
appear, floating like fairies among the green plants. Something broke
from the upper reaches of a tree and drifted like a dark leaf to a
plant below - another Black-winged Damselfly.
Mosquitoes were starting to make their
presence known as they hunted for breakfast.
From the Fungus-Covered Log I looked at
the brightening scene a round me.
To my left, to the northwest, an almost
bare slope ended in the dense green of the lowland.
To my right, to the southeast, was the
slope I loved to wander. Sometimes I would come upon a bright crimson
cluster of Jack-in-the-Pulpit berries there, and recall this slope
covered in abundant spring plants.
I heard a loud, squeaky sound around
me, and couldn't locate it or identify it. It sounded as if it was
below me in the lowland, then behind me, then farther down in the
Creek, then closer, then farther. Then I heard a plop in the Creek
water.
It could have been the sound of a
lone Leopard Frog. That frog makes an odd sound, and likely it was
only coming from the Creek and lowland, with the voice sometimes
carrying like a ventriloquist.
Then, the sound of a stressed Cicada up
in the air. Was it caught by a bird or by a Cicada-Killer Wasp?
The sky was brightening, but just a
little, as more clouds were gathering. Thunder was becoming closer,
louder, then fading again.
And the mosquitoes were getting worse.
It was time to head back up the slope
toward the house. As I worked my way up, I came upon large spider web
stretched across the ground, from tree root to tree root, ghostly in
the early morning light.
Had the spiders just constructed these
at dawn, or were they left from the preceding night?
I came up and out into the open, hoping
for rain.
