Braiding Sweetgrass

into shadow and watch as the lights come nearer, a whole line of
them. Who would be out on a night like this? Only someone out
looking for trouble, and I don’t want to be it.
Kids use this road sometimes as a drinking spot, a place to shoot
beer cans. I once saw a pair of young men kicking a toad between
them like a hacky sack. I shudder to think what brings them here.
The lights are closer now, at least a dozen all scattered across the
road like a patrol. The beams scan back and forth over the road. As
they come closer, the pattern of their lights becomes oddly familiar.
It is the very same pattern we’ve been making all night. And then I
hear their voices through the fog.
“Look, here’s another one—a female.”
“Hey—I got two over here.”
“Add three peepers.”
Grinning in the dark, I switch on my light again and step out to
meet them as they bend and carry the salamanders to safety. We
are so glad to see each other and we pump each other’s hands as
our voices rise in laughter around a virtual campfire made by
flashlights. I pour out soup for everybody and we are all
momentarily bound together with the giddiness of relief, both to
know that the approaching lights are friend and not foe and to
recognize that we are not alone in our efforts.
We all introduce ourselves and get a look at the faces under the
dripping hoods. Our fellow travelers are students from a
herpetology class at the college. They all have clipboards and Rite
in the Rain notebooks to record their observations. I feel
embarrassed to have assumed that they were troublemakers.
Ignorance makes it too easy to jump to conclusions about what we
don’t understand.
The class is here to study the effects of roads on amphibians.