So a funny thing happened. Three days after I posted my June blog on the impact of low water levels, it rained. And rained. And rained. The skies dumped 101 mm in 36 hours. Before this deluge the pond had largely drained into the permeable glacial till. The shallow waters that remained were covered with yellow lily pads and flowers.

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When the rain began overnight on July 3rd I didn’t expect to see much change in the water level. This time of year, any rain is sucked up thirsty plants to nourish the rich foliage and transpired back into the air. I mentioned as much to a friend who had braved the torrential downpour for a visit.

So I was gobsmacked when we looked out at the pond after some food and chat. I’d just eaten lunch but now I had to eat my words. The lily pads and flowers had vanished. We watched as the rain poured down and the pond rose up, right before our eyes. The lakes on the highland plateau feed abundant brooks and freshets that follow gravity’s lure to the lowest ground, right here in the holler. This funneling effect leads to dramatic rises in water level that never cease to boggle my mind.

Later that day I took a gander down to the water’s edge. A few days earlier I’d photographed some blooming blue flag irises, high on the banks above the water. Now they were semi-submerged. The rising water had covered the field of marsh grass. And the dried-out pool I described in my June blog, with its sad remnants of desiccated tadpoles, was rapidly refilling with fresh, clean rainwater.

Even after the rain stopped the pond continued to rise as highland waters tumbled into the holler. The water inundated the irises and other flowers, eddied among shrubs and brambles, and reached up to wet the feet of maple and birch. That dried-out pool filled and filled until it spilled over the land bridge that had separated it from the main pond and doomed its tadpole denizens a week earlier. The pond was, once again, a single wee lake, just as it had been back in April.

Too late, alas, for many stranded tadpoles, although at least the bucketfuls I relocated now have plenty of water and time to transform. In Frogs, Globs, and Pollywogs I described my pollywog bucket brigade, saying: ‘I don’t think there’s an ecological issue with this – it’s all one body of water much of the year and is rejoined in summer if a post-tropical storm dumps torrential rains.‘ Well, true enough. But that bit I put in italics? It’s such a rare summer event that I didn’t actually expect it to happen. And I certainly didn’t expect it to happen just four days after I wrote those wistful, hopeful words.

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And what a transformation! Water is the giver of life. Every spring, as the snow melts and the freshets and brooks flow from the highlands to the holler, rushing water is the sound and scent and sight of renewal. So it was strange but exciting to feel that sense of rebirth in early summer. An unexpected gift. Even the local critters were rejuvenated (or maybe just confused?) by this spring-like transformation. The peepers, silent except for a few stragglers, revived their lively chorus. Bird song filled the evening air. It was as if the year had rewound back to early May.

Except … not. I felt a whiff of cognitive dissonance. The rushing waters, frog chorus and birdsong of spring were juxtaposed against the deep-green, chlorophyll-laden foliage of summer. The shoots and sprouts of Spring Ditty had exploded into a jungle of shrubs and wildflowers and brambles engulfing my home. The high water, while welcome, felt a bit weird.

And so this topsy-turvy year continues. It’s been a funny time to begin a blog. Before I started this project I jotted down topics that seemed suited to each season. But I’ve had to scratch some planned blogs (including the one for this month) and several of my posts been slightly out-of-sync with 2021’s slightly out-of-sync seasons. Unlike the deadly heat dome and ongoing drought out west, which has been positively attributed to climate change, it’s difficult to unravel how much of our funny weather is due to climate change and how much is down to the usual variation in weather.

Weather is a chaotic (that is, nonlinear) system and it’s particularly chaotic on this island, jutting out into the Atlantic and buffeted by systems from north, south and west; from land and sea. The deluge that filled the pond wasn’t even a named storm – neither Claudette nor Elsa – but just some random rain event. In Calgary I often heard the old saw ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes’, but it’s even more apropos in my adopted home.

So pond goes up, pond goes down. I’ll have to wait until next year to see if there are noticeable impacts from this late inundation, but the species that survive and thrive here, from amphibians to alders, are adapted to rapidly changing water levels. Conversely, on a global scale, change is so rapid and extensive that many species don’t have time to evolve and adapt. Species have always gone extinct, but anthropogenic changes are sending the rate of extinction skyrocketing.

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When I worked as a geophysicist I would present my research at scientific conventions and meetings. Like most researchers, I always ended by presentations with words to the effect that ‘more research is needed’. It’s a cliche in science, but it’s also true. Scientific discoveries don’t lead to some totality of knowledge, but to ever more questions. No one today says, ‘Yep, we figured everything out. We’re all done here.’ (Many scientists did say that in the late 19th century, shortly before Einstein blew their minds with relativity theory and Bohr et al. dove down the bizarre rabbit hole of quantum mechanics.) Scientific research is a bit like tackling the mythic multi-headed Hydra: Chop off one head and two more grow back.

My learnings about this place are not remotely systematic or scientific. Rather they are the accumulation of casual observations, recorded in stacks of notebooks and journals over the past 17 years. But the principle still holds. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. And just when I think I’ve gained some understanding of the patterns, cycles, and seasons of this place, my assumptions are turned upside down and inside out, as if I’m in some Traveling Wilburys’ song.

So nature continues to surprise and humble me. In the never-say-never department: I wrote In my June blog about swimming in the pond, saying: ‘Not a hope of that this year’. Hah! Joke’s on me. I did indeed swim with frogs. I floated high above lily pads and flowers in that fresh, clean water. And as July passed, those drowned lilies grew up, up, up, drawn toward the light, and the water dropped down, down, down, lured by gravity. Now, at the end of July, those yellow lilies are, once again, breaching the surface to kiss the sun.

Sue McKay Miller
July 30, 2021