The Big Night
When I saw the car approaching in the distance, a familiar mixture of concern and wishful thinking soaked into me. As they got closer, the concern turned to spite and the hope that they’d slow down drained away.
I squared my body up to them. I wanted them to see the look of disapproval on my face as they sped past me. But as I looked into the headlights, my heart fell into my stomach when I saw it.
There in the middle of the lane, was an unmistakable silhouette. They were going to run over my friend.
I couldn’t get there in time.
Around age 10 I had decided that I was going to spend my life studying reptiles and amphibians.
And, as a budding herpetologist, I became savvy to a secret phenomenon that happened every year in the nearby Blue Hills. They called it “The Big Night.”
One of my core childhood memories is stepping outside and feeling like the air was crackling with aliveness. The smell of rain and earth, of new life and rot, is seared into my hippocampus. To this day, that smell still infuses my body with Christmas Eve-level excitement.
And the sound. There was this wall of sound that hit me right in the bones. Spring peepers provided a stabbing synth lead, padded by American toads’ melodic trill. The high notes were punctuated by the clap of quacking wood frogs and muted percussion of raindrops on wet fallen leaves. I had walked into an EDM concert for amphibians. An annual rave that had been running for 200 million years, and we’d just scored some tickets.
Then we pointed our flashlights at the ground.
The ground was moving.
There must have been hundreds of them. Shimmering, opalescent bodies, speckled with caution tape yellow. They were all moving in the same direction, unhurried, drawn by an invisible force.
We followed the salamanders, walking hypnotically and at about the same speed as them to avoid stepping on any. Spotted salamanders use electrochemical sense organs to locate the exact place they were born so they can return there to breed.
We were pulled forward, as if with the same magnetic energy, until we arrived at a vernal pool, which is basically a giant puddle. But, oh, what a magical puddle this was.
On land, the salamanders squirmed and slithered and jerked forward, but in the water, they were dancing. There were so many swirling to the rhythm of the frogs that I couldn’t tell where one began and another ended. And then, suddenly, I couldn’t tell where I ended and the rest of the world began. The sound was inside me and outside me at the same time. The warm air, the wet smell, the moving water, the orbiting spots. For a moment, I stopped being a kid in the woods. I was the woods. I was the frogs, the raindrops, the salamanders, the night. I was the whole thing.
I winced as the car sped past me.
Then I walked toward where I’d seen her shape, prepared for the worst. I’d been out for over an hour without a single sighting. There was a heavy sense that I had let my little friend down.
And then there she was.
Fully intact. Very much alive. One magnificent spotted salamander, following an ancient magnetic prophecy back to the exact pool where she was born, as unlikely as a Gen Zer navigating to the hospital of their birth with only a compass.
I picked her up and just stood there in the dark for a moment. Holding this impossible little creature. This jewel had spent the winter in the mud, her body in a state of suspended animation, having whatever dreams a salamander dreams about in frozen darkness. Then something awakened her, and she broke through the ground, narrowly missed being turned to a puree, and is now probably wondering what the hell is going on.
Once she gets the the pool the males will arrive a few days later, but rather than having a big orgy they do something very sophisticated. The males leave little packets of sperm on the bottom of the pond, then brush past the females like “see?” Then I like to imagine the female tells them “oh, yeah, I’ll totally use that, thanks so much!” before grabbing a better packet.
This whole thing started when there were dinosaurs. They’ve been doing this since before there were flowers. Before grass existed.
And there I was, down the street from my house, bearing witness to something I don’t think is a stretch to call a miracle.
When I was ten I told anyone who would listen that I was going to spend my life with these animals. Then things didn’t seem to turn out that way. But then somehow, without planning it, I ended up living on a road where signs go up every March asking drivers to go slowly on warm, rainy nights.
I don’t know what to call that. I just know it doesn’t feel like an accident.
Standing there that night, holding my slick, delicate friend, I reentered a familiar space. The boundary between me and the night went soft. I wasn’t a guy with a flashlight. I was just part of something larger, full of awe and gratitude.
I forgive the driver, because I realized I do the same thing all the time. How many sacred, beautiful things do I speed through without noticing because I’m focused on getting somewhere other than here? How often do I forget how wildly improbable it is to be a living, conscious being standing on a rock hurtling through space? Why can’t I remember that we’re all one when I burn the toast?
As I set the salamander down next to the pool, I forgive myself, too.
Talk soon,
Corey
P.S. Slow Spring Farm Sessions are open for booking. The vernal pools on the farm are teeming with spring peepers, wood frogs, and toads, so if you have an aspiring herpetologist, an April session near the swamp might be a religious experience for them. You can reserve a spot here: https://coreyflint.com/slow-spring-farm-sessions
