TRAGEDY IN MY SWAMP
By Barbara Tufty
It was only a small swamp tucked at the bottom of a hill, well hidden
behind a patch of briars. I first noticed it one early spring evening as
I
walked down the road toward the river.
The evening was soft, and the woods quiet, with the ever-gossiping river
rushing toward the sea. I wasn't thinking of much, when I began hearing a
cackling of geese at the bottom of the hill. Strange, I thought, for geese
would have trouble flying around the trees. I slowed down, peering toward
the swamp.
CRACK! I stepped on a fallen branch and the "quacking" stopped. I also
stopped, expecting a rush of wings. But nothing flew. Then slowly, one by
one, the cackling started again, until the whole flock sang a chorus. I spied
through the briar patch. No geese in sight! Then I noticed splashing in the
swampy water, and ripples extending outward, as if pebbles were thrown there.
Suddenly I saw them wood frogs! This was their mating season, a joyous few
days in spring when they mate and lay their eggs. After the raucous
festivities, these wary amphibians become quiet for the rest of the year,
secretly blending into the nearby woodlands.
Every year I welcomed those first "quacks" of wood frogs announcing the
awakening of spring, the songbirds returning, the redbuds and dogwood
brightening the woodlands. I stopped more often now, watching a turtle creep,
or a dragonfly hover in sunlight filtering through sycamores and river
birches. Tracks of deer, raccoons, and a beaver told me about other
visitors.
This swamp is a wetland, one of several kinds known as marshes, bogs, fens
—places where water and land meet and work in wondrous ways.
In the early days, we humans shunned these dank wetlands, afraid of the
tales of diseases, weird creatures, and the mysterious blue fox fire carried
by dead people.
So we began draining them, covering them over, turning them into farmlands,
and in more recent years, into malls, developments, highways. Since the 1700s
we have destroyed more than half of America's wetlands, at a rate sometimes
clocked at a million acres a year.
In reality, wetlands are some of the most valuable ecological pieces of
real estate on the planet. Freshwater wetlands, such as we have along the
Cacapon, act like a sieve, trapping pollutants from the water, converting
them into organic matter or into airborne gases (fox fires!). They can remove
more than 80 percent of our damaging phosphorus and nitrogen sweeping down
the river.
At times of flood, wetlands take up overflow from swollen rivers, holding
back the waters, reducing their turbulent energy. Roots of cattails, reeds,
spatterdock, and other plants tightly hold the soil, preventing erosion of
sediments into the river. All wetlands, like my swamp, provide home and food
and shelter for the many critters I've watched.
But now my swamp seems lifeless. Two springs ago, before the wood frogs
sang, boys began riding all-terrain bikes through my small swamp, whooping
around trees, churning up dark soft earth, and digging up deep furrows. They
left after the sheriff told them it was illegal to damage a wetland.
Last spring I listened in vain for my cackling wood frogs, but no sound
rose. My friend says that if left alone, the swamp will resurrect itself.
But I look at the silent dry heaps of earth--- and wonder: will my wood frogs
come back?
