The Night Was Rainy

And the road was long.

It was early April and the night was rainy. Rain had fallen all day. Late afternoon, Raven and I had walked in the rain the mile to our mailbox. He brought two umbrellas and even using one, my sleeves and pant legs were wet. Without the umbrella I would have been soaked and shivering because the temperature was dropping, a cold front coming through. The mailbox was empty, and that reminded me to tell Raven about a black widow spider I had ousted from it the week before.

Back home, we fed up during a lull in the rain, wearing our wet clothes.

Usually on a night like this I would stay home. I recommend staying home. During cold, early-spring rains, amphibians head to marshes and other vernal breeding pools. When I lived in Vermont, I volunteered to help spotted salamanders cross roadways safely during their spring breeding migrations, and this same phenomenon happens in the South and maybe everywhere. If you don’t stay home on nights like this, the creatures of land and water get smashed under foot and under tire.

But I was sleeping at Mama’s house, taking the night shift while she was in treatment for metastatic breast cancer and not doing well. I was driving 24 miles through the breeding migrations of coastal-plains amphibians, from my home to hers.

All along Old River Road I had driven slowly, dodging and straddling frogs, swerving around their wild leaps toward roadsides. I had trained myself to see them. They look like triangular granite stones in the road. No other traffic was on the road—that is normal—and I tried to miss all the creatures. I knew I couldn’t, or a 30-minute drive would take hours. My windshield wipers squealed at every pulse.

Let me say how strange I feel in this land. Entire forests vanish overnight in front of all eyes, leaving creatures homeless, leaving gaps in the earth’s cover, leaving massive holes in all the seasons. Basically I am constantly thinking of communities constantly torn apart; every animal is precious to me, as is the tree with which it lived.

I had just braked at the stop sign beside Marvin Methodist Church, where an old-growth slash pine with a flattened top makes the churchyard sing. The historic country church sits on a small parcel of land. To the left of the intersection is a 4-acre wood, also owned by the church, I will later learn, then a fancy ranch home where a man I know lives. Ahead, across the highway to the north and right of the crossroads is a large new metal building—some kind of business has gone in, out in the country, perhaps the headquarters for an industrial farm or a tractor repair garage. There is no signage, so I can’t tell.

Ahead to the left is a large and now empty field that was once a forest where soon soybeans, cotton, or some other commodity will be planted. A few random oaks were left standing at the corner. The field, I will find out, is almost 100 acres, and property maps reveal a circular depression that surely was once a wetland, probably a Carolina bay. One survives on our farm, in fact, timbered by previous owners, now recovering and a haven for amphibians.

No vernal pool or wetland of any kind has been at that crossroad for a very long time.

From the junction I turned left toward Cobb Creek, toward the oldest white and black settlement in Tattnall and probably, there along the Altamaha River, the oldest settlement of any kind. This road is busier, although less so on an April Sunday with the roads dark, with cold rain streaking down.

As soon as I turned, I saw something in my headlights. It was the triangular shape of a frog alighted on the pavement, arrested in its journey. Yes, it was a frog. I had never seen one this huge. It stood higher than a pint Mason jar.

No other cars were coming—no headlights in the darkness all around—but that would change in no time; and I had to save this strange enormous creature. I pulled off the road facing the wrong way, into oncoming traffic, and I grabbed a small solar flashlight from my overnight bag. The light was strong enough in the black rainy darkness to guide me to the frog, which was indeed huge—at least five inches long, many inches high. Its back glistened like wet sand. It was the soft brown color of willow wood, a toasted butter color, covered with dark spots. An immense, wet, polka-dotted frog had confiscated a spot on a rural stretch of highway in a remote county in the south of Georgia. I thought, leopard frog.

I was listening for traffic, marveling at this heroic frog and also hoping she didn’t fling herself toward me because with all my sturdiness, with all my big love, with all my muscular courage, I knew that I would dissolve into a wild siren should she leap toward me and land like a bag of goo against my chest. I could get both of us killed.

Back at the car I lifted out a foil reflector, the kind we unfold across our dashboards in the intense, shadeless heat of summer parking lots, and I shielded myself with it from the small leopard, and I gently executed the slightest of urges at the back legs. They suddenly expanded and lifted her and in one gigantic leap she flew out ahead of me off the pavement, into wet weeds of the ditch. I heard a giant splat, as if I’d launched a brick, and then she sprang again, the length of a human body, of a grave, now across the ditch and toward the trees.

I wanted to touch her, but it wasn’t the time. I wondered where she was going, where she would wind up. I wondered what would befall her. I wondered if she would search the empty field, looking for the ancient Carolina bay, now disappeared. I thought too about all the unkindness of the world. Some days, I tell you, I am stricken with worry.

Rain was still falling, it was colder than ever, and my mother was waiting.

Thanks to Reptiles and Amphibians of Mississippi for this photo.

Southern Leopard Frog

Female leopard frogs grow larger than the males, which are commonly about 3.5 inches long although they can reach 5 inches. They are common throughout southeastern states (except the mountainous regions of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia), and they live along lakes, farm ponds, river swamps, creek margins, ditches, and bays—any place water is present.

Since 2006 the scientific name of this subspecies is Lithobates sphenocephalus utricularia.

Lithobates=Litho meaning "a stone" + bates means "one that walks or haunts" (from the Greek)

sphenocephalus="wedge headed" (from the Greek)

utricularius="bagpipe," referring to the bagpipe-like vocal sacs (from the Latin)

The Virginia Herpetological Society has provided a recording of the mating call of the leopard frog, if you’d like to hear it. Here’s to the wedge-headed stone that walks and haunts with its bagpipe.

The Orianne Society

My favorite herpetological organization is Orianne, whose mission is to conserve imperiled reptiles and amphibians using science, applied conservation and education. One of their focus areas is longleaf pine savannas. Their refuge in Telfair County, Georgia aims to preserve indigo snakes, gopher tortoises, eastern diamond-backed rattlesnakes, and spotted turtles. Please become a member here.

Artistic Process

Raven made a painting based on the photo above. Here’s what it became. You can see more of my husband’s work at his website or on Facebook.

He turned a moment at the mailbox into another painting.

I wish he had seen the frog or that I had gotten a photo of it.

My Online Writing Courses

If you want to study creative nonfiction with me, I have a Level 1.0 class starting in June. Information is on my website, under “Courses.”

And next Saturday morning, the day before Mother’s Day, I’ll be teaching “Write Your Birth Story,” which is open to all who want to process a birth. Birth stories are some of the least-written stories in the history of humankind. It’s strange. So let’s write our experiences, mamas and papas, doulas and midwives, doctors and nurses, friends and allies.

Sandy Creek

I’ll be at Sandy Creek Nature Center, 225 acres of woods and wetlands near Athens, Georgia on May 20, 2-4 pm, to celebrate the Center’s 50-year anniversary. The free event will be held outside at the picnic pavilion, so bring lawn chairs or a blanket. The Facebook invite is here—please go there and invite anyone you know in the Athens area.

Full Moon

Last, Happy Peach Moon to you. Be well, stay grounded, and keep in touch.