Connections
by Louise Beyea
A slender path behind my house is a portal to parts unseen. It’s a low spot in the rocky mixed loam, about five rods from the back door. This dip in the walking trail becomes soppy wet when the sun’s weak rays tug at snowbanks in late April, daring the frozen crust to let go. Frigid droplets merge in the neighbor’s cattail swamp, then dribble together through a culvert under a dirt road to form a shallow pond that blocks the trail on my land. When full to the brim, the pond drains into a rivulet that drips into Copper Creek, which meanders to the twisting Nemadji River, then on to the great waters of Lake Superior, and eastward out the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic Ocean.
Frog songs lure me to the vernal pond each May. When I tread next to the boggy edge, spring peepers go silent, waiting for the clumsy invader to pass. Within days, the frogs’ gelatinous clots of eggs transform into tiny black tadpoles. In June, buttery yellow blooms of moisture-loving marsh marigolds outline the vernal pool’s dark edges. The rise of summer warmth reduces the pond to a damp depression in the rocky soil. Tadpoles lucky enough to escape to bigger water before their nursery dries up will go on to sing for another season.
These small waterways in the tangled forest beyond my house drew the attention of white prospectors in the 1840s when the American Fur Co. opened an exploratory shaft into the steely gray tetrahedrite bordering Copper Creek. Surveyors declared there was enough water in the creek to provide steam power for a copper mine, but the paucity of ore prevented the development of a full-scale mine, and Copper Creek flowed into obscurity.
Summers come on faster and last longer than they did in 1908 when surveyors described Copper Creek as a “rapid and never failing stream” in The Copper Handbook – A Manual of the Copper Industry of the World. Today, I barely need to lengthen my stride to cross water that once promised to power a mining operation. The pond in the depression behind my house appears earlier than just twenty years ago, and its visit is shorter. The diminutive rivulet leading to the creek rarely survives the summer’s heat. A broken blue line on topographic maps is the only permanent evidence of its existence.
The water’s transitory nature leaves it undeserving of protection, at least in the eyes of the Supreme Court of the United States. As snowbanks melted and birthed the ephemeral waterway in early 2023, the court stated the protections afforded by the 1972 Clean Water Act do not apply to water lacking a “continuous surface connection to navigable waters nearby.” The cattail swamp teeming with red-winged blackbirds, the spring peepers in the pond, and the brilliant marigolds may dissent.
Temporary bodies of water are called ephemeral because they are like a vision in the mist, a blurring of forms. Their fleeting nature belies the connections they initiate and the sustenance they provide. Pond-dwelling larvae morph into pesky mosquitos and become meals for phoebe nestlings snuggled under my porch eaves. A sand-colored doe leaves teardrop-shaped prints into the soft earth at the little pool’s edge as she sips. Precious water merges into mother’s blood to become milk for a dappled fawn hidden nearby. The doe lifts her head, water dripping from her soft muzzle. The water falls, falls, falls, then cascades up again half a continent away. A whale breeches and throws water to the sky, an offering that will eventually return as melting snow to open the portal once again.
Lake Superior Writers 