Braiding Sweetgrass

heavy raindrops must sound like the knuckles of spring knocking
hard on the door overhead. After six months of torpor, stiff limbs
slowly flex, tails wiggle out of winter immobility, and within minutes,
snouts nose upward and legs push away cold earth as the
salamanders crawl up into the night. The rain washes away traces
of clinging soil and polishes their smooth black skin. The land is
waking up, rising to the call of rain.
After we pull off the road and get out of the car, the quiet is
stunning in the wake of swishing windshield wipers and the
defroster going full tilt. The warm rain on cold earth has raised a
ground fog, wrapping around the bare trees. Our voices are muffled
in the mist. Our flashlights diffuse into warm halos.
Here in upstate New York, flocks of geese mark the change of
seasons, noisily making their way from winter safety to the breeding
grounds of spring. Largely unseen, but equally dramatic, is the
migration of salamanders from winter burrows to the vernal pools
where they will meet their mates. The first warm rain of spring, a
soaking rain coinciding with a temperature above forty-two degrees,
sets the forest floor to rustling and stirring. En masse they rise from
the hidden places, blink at the open air, and start on their way. This
outpouring of animals is nearly invisible, unless you happen to be in
a swamp on a rainy spring night. Salamanders move when
darkness protects them from predators and rain keeps their skin
moist. And they move by the thousands, like a herd of sluggish
buffalo. Like the buffalo, too, their numbers diminish each year.
Like its nearby cousins, the Finger Lakes, Labrador Pond lies in
the bottom of a V-shaped valley flanked by two steep hills left
behind by the last glacier. The forested slopes curve around the
pond like the sides of a bowl, funneling amphibians from the woods
of the entire watershed straight to the water. But their route is