5:49 a.m. 52 degrees, wind W 1 mph. Sky: mostly clear; a few streaks and a tubular, fuzzy white caterpillar of cloud lurks just to the east of mid-sky; ground fog; the moon, a smidgeon more than half, leans west; a world brushed with dew; bowl and doily spiderwebs highlight the lawn. Permanent streams: upper, same as yesterday, volume turned down, listlessly heads toward wetlands; a rendezvous of waters; lower, a memory that haunts a streambed. Wetlands: a bowl of upwardly mobile mist; a world of silhouettes; by the middle of the marsh green turns gray; brown turns gray; gray turns grayer and paler against the western sky. The pond: crickets, keeping pace with the temperature, barely audible. Halfheartedly, catbird meows. Other birds on strike; drift through woods as silent as smoke.
Culvert stones still damp from a water-dripping belly. A lithe, playful beast had decamped the puddled marsh, crossed under the road, and scaled the berm, through the culvert and into the brown world of the pond. A narrow trail in the brush piques the dogs' interest. We're all beside ourselves, jubilant, adrift in full-blown otter daydreams. Dogs, nuzzling wet grass, aware of so much, read a script I cannot possibly imagine. Breath deeply; snort like pigs, basking in otter essence. Ten legs. Six eyes. Three noses, one of which not up to the task of unraveling mysteries of a roving otter. Excitement . . . palpable.
Water surface skin-tight, brown and empty, veiled in a careless drift of fog. Nowhere an otter.
An itinerant fisherman. A wanderer of the backwaters. Otter crosses hills, summer and winter, perhaps miles from open water, coasting across ancient corrugations. Making a game of life. I saw one dead on the interstate once. A royal (but sad) DOR far from its natal element. An old otter skull, flat and thick, sits on my bookcase, the teeth falling out. A talisman that I’ve packed and unpacked more times than I can remember, which may explain why the teeth don’t stay put.
This otter may be in New Hampshire dining in brutal elegance on bullhead, or nearby, asleep in the derelict beaver lodge, beyond the alders. The crown prince of the watershed, the court jester of the reeds, otter galivants across my homeground . . . touching me in absentia.