We should all have a frog pond in our lives. I have one … and with this thought very much in mind, I have recently felt particularly grateful for my frog pond as a ‘my’ place: a place to which I can retreat for peace, thought, and an inner debrief from the frantic hubris of ‘the news’ … and of that, of late, there has been far too much!
Once – and here the younger will think me positively prehistoric – the news on the wireless, or on black and white TV, was delivered by one or two ‘stations’ at 9am and 6pm, or in the daily newspaper … end of story. No smart phones, no internet – and above all, no opinion! Just factual news. No spin, no bias, no analysis. That was left up to the individual.
Not so now, in these ‘unprecedented’ times – if you are fool enough to believe the incessant chatter of the media class – for we are bombarded by ‘news’. Everything in ‘the news’ is now ‘unprecedented’ and is delivered with such opinionated spin that the underlying facts become obliterated by a cloud of [usually] ill-informed blather. International and internal national bickering, brutal wars, drought, famine, religious bigotry, even abrupt climate change [cf: the Little Ice Age from 1670 to 1715 with the Global Warming period 1970 – 2021+] … with nary a good word spoken, nor a good Samaritan act mentioned.
As for Covid-19, has it been so easy to forget the Spanish Flu in 1918-1919, and the polio scourge of the first half of the 20th century – both pandemics in our lifetime? True, the Covid-19 pandemic has been a nasty one but, if we are lucky, it may yet serve to reorientate the way we think, want, seek, act, plan, and be, into the future … if we are lucky.
This is not to say that the risks of this global pestilence are small, or that attention to each of them is imperative. But as vanishingly little in life is truly ‘unprecedented’, wouldn’t it be nice if the reporting classes saw ‘precedence’ in an accurate light, toned down their hyperbole, and put a sock in it! No wonder we are all a jabbering mess when, day after day, the ill-informed keep re-informing us of the already informed. If only the virus might bring wisdom, not recrimination – yet I am not holding my breath!
While we may be one of the more intelligent animals, we shouldn’t award ourselves too many Brownie points! Old and new world apes, dolphin, squid, octopus, magpies and ravens, and dogs aren’t too shabby in the intelligence stakes either, each in their own way. To our detriment, we also seem to be a species with a remarkably short attention/memory span: we can’t manage to remember ‘precedent’ within our own life span, let alone seek sensible perspectives and lessons from the millennia of our documented human experience.
Sometimes that media scrum [did I include an ‘r’, there, in error?] gets to me. The desperation to apportion blame and to flay those who have fallen short in media eyes, despite having tried their best; the race to destroy reputations – even lives – often with a late recant after the damage has been done; the thrust of a microphone at a distraught bereaved to inanely ask, yet again … ‘how do you feel’? Yes, sometimes the media scrum gets to me.
In times like these, I give thanks for my own special frog pond, deep in the Otways, though it is but one among a legion of them there. Many are man-created: small sources of water that aid our fire-fighters … ‘mine’ is one of these. Others are naturally formed. All are captivating.
Drive a track less often driven, taking your time to slow, look, find, stop, open the window, turn off the engine, and listen during the croaking months between February and July, the ‘saison d’amour’ that peaks for our dominant Otway species, Geocrinia Victoriana [the Victorian Smoot Froglet]. Listen as the tiny ponds reverberate with the captivating sound: “wa-a-a-a-a-ark … pip-pip-pip-pip-pip-pip”. Elsewhere, and in other habitats, other happy hoppers hold sway, their croak, chirp, whistle, cluck, bark, or grunt dependent on their species!
‘My’ pond has a small, smooth, flat, and lightly gravelled spot at its edge – a space just big enough to neatly fit my little teak fold-away table, and steady the fold-away chair I carry in my car for ‘sit-a-thons’ in special places.
Inevitably, the chorus stops abruptly as I pull up. Somewhere there at the reedy edge, myriad eyes peer anxiously from their hiding places – their top half golden, their bottom half brown – sussing me out, establishing my bona fides, assessing my intent.
If I stand stock-still for a minute, a tentative call will come: ‘I think he’s OK’ … to be answered by another: ‘Yes, it seems like it.’ Soon, these ‘sounder’ calls trigger a rising cacophony as the pond returns to the business of its day. They are a chatty lot, these G-V’s. They can’t stay quiet for long.
Once accepted as ‘friend’, not ‘foe’, they seem to be happy to chatter on, unperturbed as I unload my table, set up my chair, spread a rug to wrap around myself, spray my neck and hands with a puff of Aerogard, and get out my book. They are even unfazed as I fire up my single burner stove, salivating [me, not the frogs] as two sausages sizzle in a skillet, some wholemeal bread, ‘tom’ sauce, and a glass of red ready at the side. I have even coined my own term for my secluded sausage-sizzles for one: they are ‘my bush Bunnings’.
We all could do with a frog pond for the days when ‘the turkeys get us down.’ This last 12 months, with its endless lockdowns, as ‘abuse’ has become a decadal front-runner for the most abused of words, as incriminations and recriminations – some deserved, but many less so – have become the order of the day, as kindness, consideration, and charity have faded to a memory … yes, everyone needs a frog pond when ‘the turkeys get us down.’
As I reflect on the reflections in ‘my pond’, and as my first halting steps to talk ‘frog-talk’ echo back at me from the towering Mountain Ash and Blackwood forest … these moments of pure joy calm the clamour of human noise.
Go, find, enjoy. They are better than a smart phone!
John Agar
