It’s so easy to see this as just a muddy pond to be stepped over, on this dark wet day. But this pond is brewing magic!
For in just 6-8 weeks the frogs will arrive. I listen, every day in late January, to hear the first exuberant croaking and chirruping as I round the corner of the path.
On those cold, rainy, dark days, they spill new life into the waters. Great masses of frogspawn appear, and just a short time later the tadpoles will hatch.
I love waiting for that day. I love watching the frogs mating. And later, I love seeing the tadpoles hatch and wriggle and grow. Later still, the newts arrive to lay their own eggs in this spring-fed pool. Life emerges from the darkness.
I think I love this pool more in winter than I do in the bright days of summer, when walks in the woods are more leisurely and filled with light.
So no, not just a muddy pond. A nursery for new life. A reflector of scarce, slate-grey light in the winter, receiver of rain-ripples. A reminder that in nature, nothing is static, nothing isolated.
Everything is always on its way to evolution and change. And so it is with our lives, even when the days are difficult and dark,
