At the Edge of the Marsh
Today I was out at Laguna Farm helping a friend with her computer. I took Vince out to stretch his legs after awhile and wandered around the farm, which is at the edge of the Laguna de Santa Rosa. We meandered in the glorious afternoon sun past sheds, trailers, chickens, fallow and planted beds towards open land.
The gravel driveway had a slick layer of mud over it all, so I hopped from grass clump to grass clump until we reached an area where a path had been built up with wood chips. Gratefully, I jumped onto the higher ground it afforded and continued strolling. But even the wood chips were no match for the soggy soil, and in places I watched my foot sink three inches down into what had seemed moments before a nice dry spot to step on.
Just past the last fenced-in area, past the ancient pickup that probably still ran because the tires weren’t totally sunk in mud, the wood chips ended and we were back in grass again. I looked down to watch my feet for a second and when I looked back up, just ahead of me emerged from the grass a pair of mallards, scooting between two clumps of grass into water that was deep enough to swim away in. The male’s plumage was radiant, iridescent, like he had been tremendously envigorated by all the rain and didn’t care who saw. The pair walked in step with each other with such confidence and intelligence that they were clearly wild, and I watched them paddle under tufts of tall grass then re-emerge, following the bobbing of their heads until they were completely obscured by the vista of the marshland as a whole.
What is the boundary between land and water? Our language is full of phrases that explore the question: walking into a quagmire, on high ground, a slippery slope. What seems solid ground transforms beneath you in a split second and suddenly you’re not looking at a marsh, you’re in one and have only one foot left on dry land. It was a beautiful moment, that looking up and realizing that I had crossed a boundary from domesticated to wild land without even knowing it.
If this were a dream, that would be the good news of the dream. If this were a tarot reading it would be about a positive reversal of fortunes and hidden riches emerging. If this were a car commercial, I would now have a car with actual padding in the driver’s seat cushion. But I prefer the marsh, my wet shoes, and the breathtaking, ordinary sight of a pair of ducks, disturbed but unhurried, disappearing into the wild.
April 14th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Yummy