David M. Carroll - Following the Water: A Hydromancers Notebook

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Boston New York
2009

Copyright 2009 by David M. Carroll
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carroll, David M.
Following the water : a hydromancer's notebook / David M. Carroll.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-547-06964-7
1. Wetland ecologyNew Hampshire. 2. Wetlands
New Hampshire. 3. Natural historyNew Hampshire.
4. Carroll, David M.Homes and haunts. I . Title.
QH 105. N 4 C 267 2009
577.6809742'72dc22
2008052951

Book design by Lisa Diercks
Typeset in Monotype Fournier

Printed in the United States of America
DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Several chapters of this book appeared, in somewhat different form, in Tufts
Magazine (Winter 2007) under the title "Scenes from the End of a Season."

Lines from "Villa at the Foot of Mount Chungnan" by Wang Wei, from
Anthology of Chinese Poetry, edited by Wai-Lim Yip. Copyright 1997 by Duke
University Press. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. Lines
from "Escondido en los muros" by Luis Cernuda, from The Poetry of Luis
Cernuda: Order in a World of Chaos, by Neil Charles McKinlay (London: Tamesis,
1999). Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

For Meredith, Harry, and Jim

I HAVE DEDICATED this book to three people who have played vital roles in the books I have developed over the past twenty-one years.

Meredith Bernstein, my literary agent, has been there since the beginningsince before the beginning, in fact, as she was bringing my work to the attention of publishers over the course of eight years before I received my first contract. Between that volume and this one, she has been a steadfast supporter of my writing and art, an unflagging appreciator and believer, and an invaluable ally in getting my books into print.

Harry Foster was my editor for Swampwalker's Journal and Self-Portrait with Turtles and the driving force behind my writing the latter. Only two books, but they spanned a decade and entailed many drafts, so many pages and, it seemed (to him, I am sure), countless words. I benefited greatly from the dynamic he brought to that unique, complex, and I believe necessary author-editor relationship. Beyond that he was a great personal friend and a champion of my writing. His untimely death at age sixty-two was a deep loss not only for me but for many writers, and for the literature of natural history itself.

Jim Mitchell, Herr Buchhndler, as I called him, was a valued friend and constant personal connection, the source of a remarkable sharing of so many aspects of my work and lifemy "book wars" in particularfor a decade, until his untimely death at age fifty-eight, as I was completing this book. Jim's bookstore in Warner (my "downtown office") and his open, always perceptive conversation and easy, abundant humor provided a venue for me that I will not find elsewhere.

I am indebted to Deanne Urmy for her sensitive and sustained focus, deft touch, and insightful editing of my manuscript. I am fortunate in again having Martha Kennedy as my jacket designer; my drawings could not be in better hands. Peg Anderson's thorough, thoughtful copyediting once again provided critical guidance. My "in-house editor," Laurette Carroll, proved (as she has with my previous books) a crucial touchstone as I worked my way to this final incarnation of a book that goes back some fifteen years in preliminary drafts and drawings, and even deeper in time as something I wanted to write. Rebecca Carroll was a most helpful sounding board from her perspectives as both writer and editor; she and Barbara Proper offered encouraging comments on aspects of this text as it evolved.

It would have been impossible for mestill essentially Papyrusmanto have negotiated the e-world dimensions of completing and transmitting my manuscript for this book without the patient, generous assistance of Ken Young. Brian Butler and Annie Burke served once again as constants in the grounding that has been elemental to all of my published work.

A MacArthur Foundation Fellowship was enormously helpful in clearing the way to completion of this long-contemplated project.

Yearbreak

Writing April

A Breath at Thaw

Return to the Wood-Turtle Stream

In Memory Only

Following the Water

A Day in the Shadow of a Pine

Transformation

Gray Treefrogs

Interval with Red Deer

Night, Distant Lightning

Medicine-Smelling Earth

With the Gray Fox

Variable Dancer

Walk to the Floodplain

A Drink Along the Way

Dancing Tree

Hawk-Strike

Brook Trout, Wood Turtle

Wading Alder Brook

Oxbow Meander

Fallen Buck

Broken Glass

Boundary Marker

If there is magic on this planet,
it is contained in water.

Loren Eiseley

A T THE EARLIEST openings of the ice in the overwintering niches of the spotted turtles, as minute glimmers of quickening water appear in acres of wetlands still locked in ice and snow, I forsake my winter paths: the worn floor by the kitchen table and fireplace; the even more worn threshold of the narrow doorway to the Oriental-carpeted passage down the back hall, the narrow gallery hung with paintings and drawings above agreeably overburdened bookcases, lined along the floor with stacks of more books and empty frames; the footworn stair treads up to my studio workrooms, with their slender passageways among bookcases, drawing and writing tables, and shelves, all impossibly piled with papers, notebooks, pencils, pens, and paintbrushes. With the opening up of the earth and water I go beyond my few, close-to-home outer trails of the cold season: my way to the woodshed, as trodden as an ancient deer path, and my modest snowshoe circlings through the back field and bordering woods. At thaw I begin to walk a wider way again, beyond house and gardens, in places every bit as home to me as those.

Some of my paths are of my own making, many are borrowed from deer and muskrat; most are routes that water traces. In some of these water-and-mud channels my feet drop into hollows exactly matching my strides: my own footprints of previous years' passings. In rare places left alone enough, generations of black bears walk historic migration routes in the impressed footprints of their ancestors.

Stepping from a snow-crested bank, I descend into the icy running of the brook. There is the daybreak that comes with every rising of the sun, and there is the yearbreak that comes with thaw and the unlocking of the ice. As I enter the newly opened water, I enter the year and, in a mingling of dream clearly remembered and new dream just beginning, start to wade again the streaming of its seasons.

The turbulent whitewater spates of mid-March have run their course. Floods may be brought surging back to life by April rains and the last of the snowmelt from headwater hills, escaping the banks again and surging through the low white pine terrace, the alder and meadowsweet thickets, the red maple swamp. But for now the brook has settled back within its channel and is not so restless that I cannot see into it. Insulated by neoprene, I wade in. For the first time in the year I move within the variously black, sky-reflecting, and (where shadows allow my sight to penetrate its masking surface) clear, clear flowing of the stream.