There’s a place on the south side of the lake where the water sits after a rain. Up on the hill, the rains run off the fields and pool around the trunks of the trees and cover the broken branches fallen from above.
Most of the time the place is dry. (It sure has been for the past several years.) But we had good rain this spring, and more than an inch fell this morning, so that place is full of water today.
From the trail that runs beside that place, I saw the muddy water. And I heard the trickle of the sometime stream that runs under the dike and down to the lake on the other side. And it made me think of a time long ago during what must have been another rainy year when I ran past that very spot and looked down on that very place and heard that very stream and saw a turtle in the water.
I’ve wondered about that turtle thru the years — how it fares when the rains don’t come, how it must climb up the embankment and cross the trail to make for the lake. I’ve wondered about that turtle.
And so as I walked past that place today, I peered thru the trees and underbrush down to where the water was and searched for the turtle.
Of course I didn’t see it. Â I didn’t see it, but I know it was there.