Hidden Miracles on Dean's Fork: Spring 2016

I never tire of shooting this girl and this place.

All through the winter of 2015-2016, the pond held in there, tiny but present. Spring 2016 came. Chet and I took a long Dean's walk with Phoebe on a freakishly warm March day during her spring break from Bowdoin. We were practically bare, and reveling in early spring beauties, already abloom.

Abundant, lush summer 2016 came on, and Dean's Fork was awash in flowers and birdsong. I simply couldn't stay away. I found five territorial male rose-breasted grosbeaks on that road, where before there had been none. I was reminded that birds expand and contract their ranges willy-nilly, and one must never say never. As in, "Rose-breasted grosbeaks come to the feeders during spring migration, but they never stay to breed."  

Because now they DO stay to breed. On Dean's Fork, Site of All Things Magical.

If you had to pick one species to expand its range into your local patch, which would it be? Me? The tuxedoed gent in the carmine cravat?

The other thing that hit me upon first hearing a rose-breast in full song on a June morning  on Dean's Fork is that one good bird singing its song can transform a place all by itself. It adds an aural element; it adds a visual element. But just knowing it is there... That makes all the difference.

 June 2, 2016

June 10, 2016

Who could stay away from a place like this? Why would I even try?

June 12, 2016

Chetty found a crawdad that day. He weren't skeert.

June 14, 2016, just before Phoebe went off to California in the morning.  And then to Panama. We couldn't think of a better place for our last excursion together than Dean's Fork. 

 Liam and I rode our bikes down Dean's a week later: June 20, 2016, and found a pair of box turtles mating. Who gets to see that?  People who are out there looking, that's who.

And how did the pond fare during the summer of 2016? It was down to a puddle again, a shadow of its former glory. The repaired half-dam had been opened again...guess who? I decided to keep visiting anyway. You never know what you might find. I figured whatever I find can't be worse than what I saw that September day in 2014. It is what it is. The story continues.

But just listen to the green frogs twanging their banjos and washtub basses! There is a vitality here  that the beavers started that no biped, no matter how cruel, can hope to stamp out.