Secret Pond

It’s good to have a secret pond. Ironically, once I talk about the pond, it’s not a secret anymore. Nonetheless, the place is there; you’ll have to trust me on that.

The pond’s an oblong waterhole for deer. Cattails grow lushly on one side of it. The pond looks deep and young. It is not a home for trout, nor even bass; it has sunfish and a lot of frogs, and that’s okay.

Very few people know about the pond, or care about it, and that endears it to me even more. It’s close enough to my home that, on a clear day, I imagine my house and barn can be viewed on its surface.

When I fish the pond I use a fly reel with a silent crank. No click of the handle. I hardly even know I’m fishing. Frogs leap from the tall grass; bluegills drop back to the water with a plop. I’m left on the bank, alone.

The pond blends a sense of the pastoral with the wild. Field and forest are its neighbors. Deer tracks are imprinted in the mud. I’m careful not to imprint my own.

Having a secret pond is like having an erotic dream you’ll never have to talk about. You might want to mention an exchange of looks and touches. You might want to tell someone close about the dream, but finding an adequate language is hardly worth the effort.

To acknowledge the presence of the pond is to suggest that your psyche (way down in the wilderness of your head) is trying to tell you something. There’s no point calling on Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung to assist you with the meaning here, it’s just a feeling you might get while standing at the pond.

To look at the pond on a beautiful summer evening is like waking from your dream and recollecting the famous words of Alfred E. Neumann (Mad magazine), “What, me worry?”

A raven gives a raucous croak; a chipmunk scampers through an old stone fence. Somewhere a car passes through the valley. I can hear my breathing while I’m perched on a boulder at the pond.

The pond is both close by and remote, substantial and like fog. A streamwalker, like myself, who typically fishes brooks and rivers with a fly, doesn’t quite know what to make of it. He thinks of the pond as a stream that is basically round.

bobolink

The pond is a source of poetry, too. The streamwalker doesn’t write of it but makes a real connection with the water. He doesn’t talk about it much, but if you press him he might tell you something. Yeah, it’s good to have a secret pond.