Free Following the Water by David M. Carroll Page A

when the last of the ice shelf turned into crystal-clear glacial meltwater running over sand, the day that initiated the return of life to the deglaciated Northeast. At thaw, as the last of the ice shelves drop from mounds of shrubs and royal ferns in clear-running, sand-bottomed channels, I have intimations of that momentous melting in scenes that seem reenactments of it in miniature. Perhaps not long after that glacial retreat—at least in a geologic time frame—members of my own species, early enough arrivals to be called indigenous (though so much later in coming here than the preglacial turtles and ferns), followed this very route on hunting sojourns or seasonal migrations, without the comfort of insulated waders.
    I suspect that it is a combination of treading feet and seasonally drifting water that keeps this channel open, a slender conduit little more than a foot and a half wide over most of its gently snaking length. It divides further as it links networks of other channels and pools throughout the marsh and swamp elements at the eastern and western extremities of the complex. Many of the watery cuts are so narrow that I can barely slip one leg past the other in wading through. As with the intermittent stream, the water finds its varied ways here, flood time after flood time, to reclaim its runnings and pondings and so define the enduring wetlands. For several decades now I have been one of the animal forces that helps keep the channels open, as I repeatedly retrace their labyrinthine networks.
    Even in this leafless early flood season I see a brushy haze of dense thickets and crowding screens of shrubs when I look directly ahead. I could almost forget that I am in a wetland, and nearly half immersed at that.
    The depression within a depression in which this shrub swamp is set combines the deepest—though rarely exceeding thirty inches even at times of highest flooding—and most permanent water with the densest growth to be found in the overall wetland complex. The shrub swamp is also the site of the earliest ice-out and thus it is the citadel of overwintering spotted turtles. I call it the Tangle, although any guest I brought here might observe that any of the sur
rounding interspersions of shrub swamp and marsh is every bit as much a tangle.
    I have come here over the seasons of so many years, from March or April's opening of the water until October or November's closing over, that I have developed something of a spotted turtle's familiarity with the labyrinthine landscape. My feet, even through waders and wading shoes, have acquired a very literal feel for its watery pathways and the vagaries of its substrate. I get a few reminders each year, as I rediscover hidden depths of muck with a sudden unexpected sinking. My passage here is perhaps not typical wading, for I must knee my way among unyielding mounds of mingled shrubs, royal ferns, and sedges and shoulder my way through alders. Moving through the Tangle is a total-body experience.
    Though I know this wetland so well, in its purely physical as well as its ecological and metaphysical aspects, neither the familiarity nor the hardships breed contempt. Being here has brought me to a knowledge, both tangible and ineffable, of a world apart, completely distinct, from that of my own kind. How many of us, and how often, think of the fact that we live our time on a planet, within that planet's time? What good is it to be alive on Earth and never come to know at least the place where one lives? We don't even try to know it with our senses, much less with our minds and spirits. How many human feet in the industrialized
world know anything more than floors, pavement, lawn, or manicured sandy beach in a lifetime? We live on Earth without walking it. What do we touch with our hands? So many human eyes and ears see only the human-constructed landscape, hear only human sounds. Wild hills and swamps are looked at casually, if at all, viewed as little more than