If you look at old maps, wetlands run not just straight along Sagg Pond but also dot the landscape, on a diagonal from the swamp, near whitewalls, all the way to Gibson Beach. The bogs are mostly gone now; they can only be seen when it rains a lot — a lot.
Sagg is low, and its land is generally wet. We may not have the bogs, but we have man-made ponds, enough that at nightfall, when the air is still, from each direction you can hear the sound of spring peepers.
I know I am not alone in my affection for these frogs. I know I am not the only one who stands on the porch listening intently to their wonderful noise.
A dense fog had set in and the evening had grown warm. The peepers were at full choral capacity as a storm moved strangely and silently along our coast. The fog buffered the lightning strikes, and the flash was emitted as a throb that proved the fog’s presence in a hazy, enveloping glow. It was not unlike a disco, beset by dry ice and smoke machines.
I expected to hear thunder but there was still none to be heard. I reasoned that the fog made the storm seem closer than it was.
I went inside. As I closed the door on the worsening weather, I noted that the peepers were unchanged. They had not let up in the least.
The fog vanishes, the temperature drops. The frogs continue. Purple bolts shoot straight across the sky; the cloud structure of the storm, its high folds and dark furls, can be seen in the flashing. At moments, it was broad daylight, and yet there was still not one audible crash of thunder.
I try to look at the radar, try to decide if I am in danger. Instead, I remember how Capote quipped that Sagg was like Kansas with an ocean breeze. I take that as a cue and head for what I imagine is a safer structure. Which is, really, just another person to watch it with.
Because, now, we stand outside again, on the porch, remarking how neither of us have ever seen anything like this. And yet the odd and irate tempest, still unaccompanied by booming and crackling, is made surreal by the incongruity of the gentle insistent chant of amphibian mating calls.
More Posts from Marilee Foster
