Following the Water by David M. Carroll

and is a halfway house for the spotted turtles as well. Although their ground or, I should say, water time here is generally brief, the pool is an important hiding, foraging, and sometimes mating place for them. For a couple of weeks out of the entire season I find the turtles here, sometimes four or six in a day. I rarely see them here outside of this narrow window.
    As I do each time I come here, I survey this clearing in the alder carr from behind an especially thick stand of northern arrow-wood and meadowsweet before moving out into the open. Nothing catches my eye in the pool or its associated channels, where a spotted turtle could appear at any moment. As my eyes drift beyond the water, scanning its adjacent shrub thickets, they are arrested by a startling turtle shape, so large that it is out of scale with any search-image I had in looking over these very familiar surroundings. My instantaneous thought is that I have discovered an old, top-size wood turtle with a smooth-worn carapace. But then I realize that this turtle's shell—high-domed and blue-black in its soft reflective sheen—is too big to be anything other than a Blanding's turtle.
    Now and again I find the young of this species as I track

    Blanding's turtle.
    spotted turtles along this migratory route. Most are under twelve years old; I have never known an adult to travel this way. Even by the cryptic-behavior standards of most turtle species, Blanding's turtles move in mysterious ways, sometimes for miles, traveling overland, even traversing forested upland ridges where one would not expect to see a turtle, shifting among wetlands, with days spent in hiding without moving at all. Frogs scatter as I fight my way through restraining brush and deep-muck shallows. I cannot help but feel anxious upon making such a unique discovery, but I don't have to rush; there is nowhere for this turtle to go. She is terrestrial-basking several yards from any water or mud deep enough that she could elude me. At my first break toward her I see her lift her head slightly and look furtively left and right. Then she freezes. She too is aware that she has no place to go and can only attempt to go unnoticed. Wood turtles that I approach like this on land do not so much as blink an eye as I draw near and will rarely make a move at all unless I touch them. I slow my advance, then pause. I am in the extraordinary position of having an extended period of time in which to take in a sighting of one of these quick-to-disappear turtles. Sightings like this become indelible in my mind, yet in the excitement of the occasion—revelation, really—one can rush the moment and miss too many details.
    The turtle's legs, tail, and long, long neck are withdrawn
into the helmetlike fortress of her nine-inch-long shell. Folds of her neck skin, as well as her head from just behind the eyes, protrude from her carapace. She faces the sun. Several small but distinct pits in her shell allow me to recognize her as an individual I have seen before, at least twice, the last time something like six years ago. We meet again. Many occasions are annual; others occur a number of times in a given year; still other meetings are separated by years or even a decade. Some occur once in a lifetime. With the long-lived turtles, my own life span will not allow for many future reunions; that is, if this place in its broadest extent is left to them, they will be here well beyond my time.
    The turtle has oriented herself behind a clump of alder stems in such a way that several shadows of varying width drape over the contours of her shell. This alignment is probably deliberate; she is taking the afternoon's imperceptibly shifting shadows as a means of procrypsis, acquiring a disruptive pattern that helps break up the form of her shell and grant her a measure of concealment. Only when I run my hand lightly over the smooth, irresistible dome of her shell does she withdraw her head. Here, in the feel of this