Photo 26579979 | Wood Frogs © Chris Hill | Dreamstime.com
Like an eavesdropper, I listened: a grunting, gulping conversation floated up from the seam where Pin Hill tucked into the earth like a shirt belted by a thin stream. What kind of early morning party had I crashed? The sounds were cheerfully mechanical, as if the contents of a grandfather clock had sprung to life. Yesterday these woods held still, and today they rippled with news of the wood frogs’ triumphant reanimation. Since November the frogs have hovered near death, freezing and thawing under a cloak of leaves, their cells filling with chemicals to stop their blood from razoring through their veins each time it turned to ice. All winter, the frogs bore the weather like a grudge. But this April morning they cheered, suddenly back on speaking terms singing an ebullient chorus of pick me, pick me Spring’s most urgent exhortation. Does forgiveness happen slowly or all at once? Did this morning’s breath of velvet air rouse their music, or have their hearts been relenting with the light as it lingers later in the evenings, coy as lace at the edges of a sleeve? My own experience suggests there are no switchflip transformations. I come back to life slowly, with an exhausting tick, tick, tick of stutter steps forward and back. I go to bed hopeful, then wake up hoarse and defensive. There are wrongs I’ve held frozen in my heart for years, desires I’ve never given voice to. The way I see it, all change requires an agonizing amount of slow waiting. I expect the frogs have been congregating in this wisp of stream for weeks, each one quietly warming up until together they take in a well-rehearsed breath. Still, I hope somewhere there is a frog – feckless, hungry so unburdened by his own becoming that when he wakes up late, surrounded by the spring chorus of his peers before he’s even had time to cough he launches into song, heart hammering away in his throat. I hope for me too there are second chances like that, when after an agony of cold waiting there will be an awakening thaw a sudden purpose, a sign - and the music will rush through me all at once.