Behind the Puddle

There are days when going outside feels like a simple decision, and there are days when it feels like something I have to negotiate with my own body. Today was one of those days. I was hurting more than usual, walking was difficult, sitting was not especially comfortable, and I was already tired before the day had really begun. I could have stayed inside, and I would have had every valid reason in the world to do exactly that.

But eventually I realized something that made the decision easier. I was going to hurt whether I stayed inside or went outside. I was probably going to be uncomfortable either way, and staying inside was not going to make the pain disappear. So I decided that if I was going to feel this way regardless, I would rather feel it sitting on the patio looking out over the puddle.

I did not go outside because I expected nature to entertain me or because I thought something special was going to happen. In fact, I had almost convinced myself of the opposite. The weather was supposed to get hotter as the day continued, and I assumed the heat would send most of our familiar visitors somewhere cooler and quieter. I thought I understood what kind of day it was going to be before I had really given the day a chance to show me.

Nature made a liar out of me almost immediately.

Stanley or Stella, one of our Great Blue Herons, finally appeared while I was outside to see it. Instead of one of those brief sightings where I reach for my phone just as the bird disappears, I was able to sit and watch. The heron waited, stalked, walked through the shallow water, and caught a fish. I even managed to record more than a few hurried seconds of a life that normally seems determined to happen just outside my timing.

Then our little Green Heron came around. By now it has become familiar enough that I have started to recognize its habits, especially its tendency to visit during the middle part of the morning. Familiar does not mean ordinary, though. Every time it appears, I still stop what I am doing and look.

Then there was someone new.

A little shorebird was making its way through the shallow water, and at first I thought it was simply another visual reminder of how little water remained in the puddle. Then it moved, changed position, and made me look again. It turned out to be a Solitary Sandpiper, most likely passing through during migration, finding exactly what it needed in a place I had been looking at as depleted and shallow.

That alone would have been enough to make the morning memorable, but apparently the puddle had no intention of stopping there. The Cardinals appeared, the woodpecker came through, and all of the little brown birds seemed to flood the feeders at once. Several of them made their way to the fountain, turning the small source of water near the patio into its own gathering place. Apparently everyone had received a different weather forecast than I had.

A Blue Jay flew through long enough to announce that it was still part of the neighborhood, even though it completely ignored the suet log that I might have expected it to visit. Two frogs suddenly hopped their way through the shallow water and continued on without giving me much time to understand where they had come from or where they were going. The fireflies danced above the puddle doing the same quiet work they seem to do every day, whether I happen to notice them or not.

And then our little hummingbird appeared at the salvia.

It stayed for barely a minute. Earlier this summer I worried that the smaller, struggling salvia plants I had been able to find would not be enough for the hummingbirds to notice us this year. But apparently a minute was all it needed, and a minute was all I needed too. Sometimes a minute is enough to know something came back.

At some point I noticed movement beneath the green covering on the puddle and became convinced that Shelly had finally provided evidence of herself. I could see a shell moving through the shallow water, even though I could not manage to catch a photograph with her head lifted where I could see it clearly. After everything else that had happened, Shelly appearing seemed perfectly reasonable.

Nature made a liar out of me again.

The movement eventually became clear enough that I realized I was not watching Shelly at all. There were two smooth-shelled turtles making their way down the puddle together. What had begun as evidence of one familiar visitor became the introduction of two completely unexpected ones.

I kept thinking about how many times throughout the day I had decided what I was seeing before I really knew. I had decided the heat would keep everyone away. I had mistaken a new Sandpiper for part of the shallow landscape. I had decided the turtle moving through the water must be Shelly. Again and again the puddle seemed to answer, “Look again.”

None of those wrong assumptions felt embarrassing. They felt like reminders of how observation actually works. We notice something, we make our best guess, and then sometimes life gives us another piece of information and asks us to reconsider what we thought we knew. There is something wonderful about being allowed to change the story when the story changes in front of you.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the distance, thunder began to rumble.

That changed Harper’s interpretation of the day immediately. A little thunder was apparently enough evidence for her to decide that the safest possible location was not merely beside me but as close to becoming physically attached to me as one dog could reasonably manage. For a while I was fairly certain she had no intention of ever getting off my lap.

The weather never became as hot as I expected. Instead, the sky continued to change, and eventually the rain arrived. Because the wind remained calm and the awning was already extended, I did not have to go inside. I could sit beneath it and watch the rain fall across the yard and into the puddle.

That may have been one of my favorite parts of the entire day.

There was nothing new to identify and nothing I needed to photograph. The rain simply fell while the puddle received it, and I was able to stay exactly where I wanted to be. After a day filled with arrivals, movement, discoveries, and surprises, there was something equally meaningful about simply sitting beneath the awning and watching.

I am grateful I decided to come outside today, but not because any of these things fixed what was wrong. I still cannot walk well. I still hurt beyond what I consider a typical day, and I am still tired. The patio did not make my body more cooperative, and the wildlife did not take away the pain.

What changed was that pain was no longer the only thing happening.

There was also a heron stalking a fish. There was a Sandpiper stopping during migration, a hummingbird visiting the salvia, frogs crossing shallow water, turtles moving beneath the surface, birds crowding the feeders, fireflies dancing over the puddle, rain falling beyond the awning, and one very worried dog convinced she needed to occupy the exact same physical space as I did. The pain remained, but the day became larger than the pain.

And that may be the part I most want to remember.

Some days are genuinely difficult to get through. Sometimes our reasons for staying inside, staying still, saying no, or deciding something is simply too much are completely valid. There are also days when taking a chance on something small does not make the difficult thing disappear, but gives us something else to carry alongside it.

Today I took that chance by walking out the door.

Everything that happened afterward made the choice especially memorable, but none of it was required for the choice to have been worthwhile. If the herons had never appeared, if the Sandpiper had flown somewhere else, if the turtles had remained hidden and the hummingbird had skipped the salvia, I still would have been glad I came outside. I still would have had the trees, the puddle, the patio, the sounds around me, and a place where I wanted to spend part of a difficult day.

Maybe that is what today ultimately gave me.

Sometimes we make assumptions about what a day is going to be before we have lived enough of it to know. Sometimes nothing changes the hard thing we are carrying. But every once in a while, choosing to step into the day anyway gives life enough room to place something beside it.

Today, there was quite a lot waiting beside it.