Small water in the landscape

I am writing this in April after a wet week. The forests around here are full of small water — water that is not on any map, that has no name, that is mostly invisible by July. The puddles. The brief streams that form in the shallow grooves of the path and run for a few hours after a rain. The drips from the underside of overhanging rocks. The damp patches where a spring is almost surfacing but not quite.

I had walked past most of this for thirty years. The forests have lakes and streams and ponds, which are on the map, and which I knew about. The small water is what I am learning now, mostly because a friend who is a freshwater ecologist took me out one Sunday and pointed.

What is in a forest puddle

A great deal more than you would think. The friend took a small plastic pipette and a small white tray with him on the walk and at every puddle he would crouch down, suck up a small sample, and put it on the tray. The puddle of grey water with leaves in it that I had not even fully registered as a puddle had, on the white tray, six different small creatures visible to the naked eye and a great many more visible only with the hand lens.

The puddle was a small ecosystem with a lifespan of, in his estimate, about five days. It had been formed by the rain. It would dry out by midweek. The creatures in it lived their entire lives in puddles like this one, completing reproductive cycles in the brief window the puddle was wet, and surviving the dry weeks as eggs in the dust.

The drip on the overhanging rock

There is, near the second stream on my regular walk, a small overhanging rock face about a metre and a half high. From the underside of the overhang, in wet weather, there is a slow drip — maybe one drop every three or four seconds. The drip has been there, the friend told me, probably for centuries. The slow drip has, over the centuries, built up a small calcium deposit on the underside of the rock, and the deposit shelters a particular kind of liverwort that does not grow anywhere else on the walk.

I had walked past this for thirty years. It had not been invisible. I had simply not been the kind of walker who saw it. Now I am, and the walk is slower, and richer, and I notice the small water everywhere.

On slowing down

Most of the small water disappears if you walk at a normal pace. The puddle is just a puddle, the drip is just a drip, the damp patch is unremarked. The small water reveals itself to a walker who is willing to stop and look. Crouching is the basic posture. The hand lens is the basic tool. The willingness to be five minutes slower on every walk is the basic discipline.

If you have a regular walk, try noticing the small water. Bring a hand lens. Crouch by the puddle. The forest gets larger.