Braiding Sweetgrass

interrupted by a road that snakes through the hollow. The pond and
surrounding hills are protected as state forest, but the road is a
free-for-all.
We walk down the deserted road, scanning our lights back and
forth over the pavement. Salamanders aren’t the only ones on the
move tonight: wood frogs, bullfrogs, green frogs, leopard frogs, and
newts also hear the call and begin their annual journey. There are
toads, peepers, red efts, and legions of tree frogs all with mating on
their minds. The road is a circus of jumps and leaps flashing in and
out of our flashlights. My beam catches the glittering gold of an
eye. The peeper freezes as I approach and then hops away. Ahead
of us, the road is alive with frogs leaping across, two here in my
light, three over there, bounding toward the pond. With their
prodigious leaps they cross the road in just a few seconds. Not so
the heavy-bodied salamanders, who belly their way across the
road. Their journey takes about two minutes, and in two minutes
anything can happen.
Spotting the lumbering forms among the frogs, we stop and pick
them up one after the other, carefully setting them on the other
side of the road. We walk back and forth between the passage of
cars over the same small stretch, and each time we look there are
more—the land seems to be releasing salamanders as numerous
as the geese rising off a marsh.
I run my light across the road and the center line reflects bright
yellow against the rain-black asphalt. In the corner of my eye, there
is something darker than dark, a break in reflection off the
pavement that draws my light back to that spot. The shadow
resolves into a big spotted salamander, Ambystoma maculata,
black and yellow like the road. The shape is so primitive, with right-
angle limbs jutting from the side and moving with a jerky,