Summer Sunrise at Cottonwood Pond

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.