Words + Images

Steve has a ritual.  When he buys chicken or steak at the grocery store, he returns home to immediately separate the meat into smaller portions, prepares a marinade of red wine, soy sauce, garlic and black pepper that he then pours over the meat which he then freezes.  And that’s what happened yesterday.  After a short hike in the Middlesex Fells Reservation, we stopped by the grocery store on the way home.  As he was about to prepare the meat, he shouted, “Wait! I have to wash the frog off my hands first.”  Why would he shout such a thing?  Well, because he was helping me corral frogs in the Fells.  Not to keep for cooking or anything, just to photograph for Melissa.

Melissa loves frogs.  For years, I’ve sent her all things frog related.  Stickers, stamps, charms, etc.  Rarely photographs. Though I’m glad frogs are in the world, normally I don’t feel a need to get close to them and rarely have I had an opportunity to photograph them like this weekend.  They were popping up everywhere!  As Steve and I chased the little critters around the woods, I kept telling him, “I’m doing this for Melissa. Only for Melissa would I be getting this close to this creature.”  But when I spoke with Melissa this morning she reminded me that I apparently sparked her interest in frogs in college over twenty years ago.

“It’s true,” she said.  “We were walking from Central Campus to the Quad, cutting through Duke Gardens.  It was summertime and I remarked about the sound of the loudest crickets I’d ever heard in my life.  You told me those weren’t crickets but frogs singing.  Then you pointed them out to me, sitting by the edge of the pond.  And then you went off on this lovely discourse about frogs, why they’re important in the world and how through song they were trying to  … you know … get together and make babies. I’ve loved frogs ever since.”

Steve did manage to pick up this fellow and hold him in the palm of his hands, and thus the need to wash the frog off his hands.  I don’t know if there will be anymore impromptu frog photography shoots, but I will try to remember to step more carefully through the Fells and I will treasure a lost memory regained.

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