{"id":410,"date":"2014-03-09T14:29:55","date_gmt":"2014-03-09T21:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=410"},"modified":"2014-03-09T14:29:55","modified_gmt":"2014-03-09T21:29:55","slug":"encounters-with-newts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=410","title":{"rendered":"Encounters with Newts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Red-bellied Newt at Montgomery Woods State Reserve<\/p><\/div>\n

Now that our rains have finally started, the newts have come out of hiding. Last week I spent a couple of days at Green Gulch Farm<\/a>, a Zen Buddhist retreat center and organic vegetable farm near San Francisco. California Newts were all over the paths. Their brown skin smooth, their underbellies a brilliant golden yellow, they were marching to the streams where they breed.<\/p>\n

This morning we had to step around another California Newt on a path at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens<\/a>, a little one in its rough-skinned terrestrial phase. It was reluctant to move, since it was busy consuming a large earthworm; the last half-inch of the worm still hung from its mouth.<\/p>\n

These encounters reminded me of visiting Montgomery Woods <\/a>some years ago, when their close relatives the Red-bellied Newts were everywhere. I \u00a0became fascinated with the story of their breeding migrations and wrote this poem, which was published in my 2007 chapbook, Quickening<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Red-Bellied Newt<\/strong> (Taricha rivularis)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What stirs, with the rain, that urge to return?<\/p>\n

Some years she ignores the tingle in her nose,<\/p>\n

the scent of that particular section of stream<\/p>\n

where under a stone she hatched into a nymph,<\/p>\n

then played for a year in the rippling water<\/p>\n

before crawling transformed up the bank.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Summers she hides. Home is a secret hollow<\/p>\n

under gnarled redwood roots in the ancient grove.<\/p>\n

Some winters too. But once in a while, when the rains begin,<\/p>\n

she emerges to make the journey to her breeding place.<\/p>\n

Purposeful, she crawls, the red of her feet and belly<\/p>\n

bright against the redwood duff,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

navigating by smell to the rocky stream a mile away,<\/p>\n

not home exactly, but the place she came from,<\/p>\n

that pulls her back as it pulled her mother back.<\/p>\n

Here she will mate, immersed in the water that gave her life,<\/p>\n

deposit the fruits of her procreation under a stone,<\/p>\n

then wander off to find good forage for the summer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For thousands of years, as the giants grew overhead,<\/p>\n

her kind have made this journey, secure in their faith<\/p>\n

that the stream will still flow clear and fast over rocks.<\/p>\n

They raise a question: what pulls us humans,<\/p>\n

and to what deep places, and what is it we deposit,<\/p>\n

like fertile newt eggs on the undersides of stones?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that our rains have finally started, the newts have come out of hiding. Last week I spent a couple of days at Green Gulch Farm, a Zen Buddhist retreat center and organic vegetable farm near San Francisco. California Newts were all over the paths. Their brown skin smooth, their underbellies a brilliant golden yellow, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,116,8,19],"tags":[404,188],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}