Ponds

Ponds

A pond is a body of water of a certain size, characterized by stillness. It isn’t a lake. It is more intimate than a lake. I don’t think there is a pure prescription for the size of a pond, but it feels manageable. You can walk around the perimeter of a pond. Get your arms around her.

A pond feels like a place to deepen. A place to take off your shoes and wade into mud. A pond needs mud. And we need to sink our feet into mud, I think, probably more than most of us do. You can swim in a pond. You can lie down beside one. You can bring children into a pond and study the abundance of life that appears in one. The dragonflies and tadpoles. The tiny insects down in the muck. The waterplants.

You can put your nose right against the water, and stir the bottom with your toes, and smell the exhalations of earth transforming herself in the muck. A pond shimmers with birthing and decay. It smells like this.

Each body of water has its own proper anatomy, its own purpose, its own meaning-making. There are springs, and creeks, and streams, and rivers. There are swamps, and marshes, and estuaries, and bays. There are lakes and seas and oceans.

Ponds are a place to have intimacy with still water. A place to slow down, a place to return to yourself. Perhaps since Thoreau famously chronicled his favorite pond (perhaps long before), their coziness has found its place in our psyches.

Do you have a favorite pond? Might you find one?