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David Lawrence Reade
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Something Different...
 July 2008

This month’s images are pictures for the mind. After all, what are words read but mind pictures. This is one of the stories I feature in my new book, Western New York Wild.

The Amazing life of Hellhole Pond

I find myself in a hotel in the middle of an industrial zone, an area that has been sacrificed to the great god of progress. Surrounded by industrial companies and office parks, I feel isolated from nature. As is my nature, I have awakened early; I have a couple of hours to kill. So I do what I do, I explore. I walk the roads feeding the industrial parks. I find some green—some hope locked in between the buildings. A tangle of electric lines runs overhead and where they run, there are no buildings. I follow where they lead me. I find mud, muck, dirty marshes and, lo, what’s this?—a tiny pond with a couple of old, but functional birdhouses on time-tilted posts along the perimeter hidden from sight at the far edge of an unkempt little three hole golf course.

How long has it been since an “explorer” like me has stumbled upon this forlorn pond I wonder? Amazingly, despite the location, the pond teems with life! In the presence of powerful electromagnetic fields, amid a highway with industrial dirt, dust, and turmoil, surrounded with shredded fast food wrappers flapping in the bushes like prayer flags, still, there are plenty of survivors here. As I stroll the pond’s edge, big fat bullfrogs dive into the murky depths. Little birds are in the heat of battle over who gets to reside in the birdhouses. Robins are hopping on the grass, looking? Listening? for worms. Water bugs skim across the pond bottom. I spy miniature dragon flies (damsel flies?) hovering over the surface. There certainly is no lack of life here at what I dub “Hellhole Pond.”

I return to my little oasis the next morning. The walk here was tortured by hissing tires, loud motorcycles, grinding gears—the rush hour crowd, with coffee in one hand, cell phone in the other, all five minutes late and trying to make it up—just like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.

Two Canada geese couples and their fluffy broods greet me upon arrival. Each couple has three goslings, one group obviously older than the other. The smaller ones are about the size of my fist; the larger about double that. They all stay a wary distance away, moving when I move, grazing when I stop, the parents’ eyes always on me. The goslings waddle back and forth like little fuzzy tennis balls with legs, always keeping to momma’s flanks. I try to move slowly and smoothly so as not to upset them too much.

I wander the edge of the pond looking for the bullfrogs. Splash! There’s one. He makes a run for it. He is huge, actually bigger (or at least longer) than the smallest goslings. The little birds must have settled their apartment dispute since yesterday, for all is quiet around the birdhouses. In the distance, the golfers on the golf course are oblivious of me and this little pond with its teeming life, intent only on whacking a little white ball into a distant little hole.

Finally, it’s time to return to the hotel to get ready for my day. I leave with mixed emotions—here is an amazing display of the resilience of life yet I am saddened by the fact that all the pond residents must live amid the clutter, clatter and clamor beneath sizzling power lines. I tell myself they don’t know any different. I walk back next to a corridor of green containing a little stream at the edge of the golf course. I spy something white through the bushes down at creek’s edge. I push through the scratchy shrubs, slide down the muddy bank and retrieve a gleaming white golf ball half submerged in the mud. I wash it off and take it with me—my good luck charm for the day.

As earlier, I walk along the highway with whizzing cars and trucks just feet from me, but I no longer hear them—the sweet memory of the amazing life at Hellhole Pond insulates me for now. Sometimes it’s life’s little discoveries like stumbling upon this unlikely sanctuary that make all the difference. My only regret? I have no pictures to share—I didn’t have my camera with me!

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This story and a dozen more like it are available in my new book Western New York Wild. Click here for more info.

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