Newts – a recollection

Newts. They used to come down in the Spring – slipping and crawling out from God-knows-where. We never saw them come. We just knew when they arrived. We’d circle the pond at least once a day, looking for the creatures – a quest, a slimy quest. I liked the little guys a lot. They were blind, but they knew exactly the best place in the world to live. Next to Fred’s Rapid on the Stanislaus River .

That was then. Now neither of us can live there. It’s gone, under water slimier than newt skin, backed up by a dam created by greed slicker than newt shit.

But we lived there once… in a golden age that will live forever in my cells. And some day, when the DNA works its way up out of the mess we’ve made of this planet…..that memory will still know how to get back to the pond by Fred’s.

I’m waiting.