A dry autumn

We've woken to rain the past few mornings, which is good news, because I have visited a number of very dry wetlands in the last month.  After three months of dry, warm weather, both the Rideau Valley and Mississippi Valley Conservation Authorities issued low water advisories.  The trees began to show color in late August -- a clear sign of stress.  The turtle pond, north of Lester Road was dry a month ago, as was Upper Poole Creek north of the Trans-Canada Trail.  In the latter site, frogs and minnows clustered in the sole remaining pool in the culvert under the trail, and turtle tracks led out across the muddy flats of the pond toward the cattails and some other sanctuary.  Shirley's Brook was dry at Terry Fox Drive.  The Ottawa River is at it's lowest level in fifty years.  I'd welcome several weeks of wet weather -- just not next weekend, when Tom and I plan to camp at the Barron River.

The drought reminds me of some of Saint Teresa of Avila's thoughts on prayer, which I read years ago in a brilliant little book called, a Renaissance Reader (which also included, if I recall, an exchange of letters between Erasmus and Luther).  Saint Teresa wrote about those times in our lives when we pray only with the utmost difficulty, likening them to a dry garden, in which no amount of effort seems to bear fruit.  Sue and I have a friend suffering through such a time, following a great loss.  Those are times, says Saint Teresa, when persistence is most important.  It prepares the ground for when the rains come.

A similar thing happens in certain kinds of wetlands.  Beaverponds go through a well known lifecycle, which includes a period of abandonment.  After a few seasons of inattention, the old beaverdams may breach, draining the wetland down to a low, ugly mudflat.  But then the miracle:  the seeds that lay underwater, buried in the mud and the muck, burst into life, transforming the mudflat into a vibrant meadow of sedges, reeds and shrubs.  The new growth, in turn, prepares the way for the return of the beavers.  What seemed desolate begins a rebirth.