The pond's new start

In the mid-1970s, I was a biology student at the University of Rhode Island. It was my second attempt at college, and though it went about as well as my first attempt several years earlier, which is to say, not very well, I did have the happy chance to meet and take courses with a zoologist and character named Bob Shoop. He got me started in a lifelong love affair with vernal pools, and when I left school a second time to start a nomadic career as a journalist, I did a story on Shoop's work with Spotted Salamanders, one of the stars of the temporary pond firmament. My mentor, in summing up the habitat, told me something that has stayed with me ever since. "Every year is a new experiment," Bob explained, noting that the great annual drying of these ponds wipes the slate clean and starts things over. So the experiment begins, in a vernal that last week was bone dry. Today, it's showing signs of starting to fill.