Pollen Rainbows at My Pond in the Barrens

In which I go in search of pollen rainbows, and end up dancing with myself!

It was a nice morning, and I was heading out for my walk. I was just going to do Stonerow, as I hadn't done that walk in a little while. But my husband suggested that as it is springtime, why didn't I take my bike? 

Well, I thought about that, and decided to head over to my favorite little pond in the Barrens. Taking the bike makes it quicker. Not so much quicker to GET there, as it is somewhat uphill, but MUCH quicker to come back, as I do love to come flying down the hill at top speed without using the brakes. LOOK OUT, WORLD!!!

So in two shakes of a lamb's tail, I was in the Barrens. I saw the amphibian lady's car in the parking lot, and another beside it. And when I got to my pond, wow, amazing, wonderful: the pollen rainbows were some of the BEST I've ever seen! I strolled over to my favorite spot to stand, and I took a bunch of pictures.

As I walked back around the pond, to where the researchers were hanging out (there were four people, a more racially diverse cast than is usually found in the Barrens), I heard someone calling my name, saying Hello. It was the lady I'd introduced myself to the last time I saw her.

She called out to me and I shouted back my own Hello. I gestured to the rainbows, which were all around us on the water. And she said Yes, they were the most she had seen! And I said they were too. She thanked me for pointing them out to her the other day; she said her first thought was that it was pollution on top of the pond. Pollution! Oh my! How wrong could she be!

But she said that now she liked to think they were pollen rainbows, just as I had said. And apparently my words had convinced her. I demurred: Well, I wasn't sure WHAT they were. I raised my hands in the air. I tried to find the words and explanations and pull them down.

My new thinking, I said, was that the rainbows are made when the light refracts through some kind of surface gas that is created by living organisms digesting the biomass. I didn't SAY springtails, but I was THINKING about them. 

Either that, or swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and refracted the light from Venus, I thought to myself, and I giggled a little. (Why yes, calling upon the thousands of poems and movie quotes and song lyrics that live in my brain DOES help me keep myself easily amused.)

But she liked the pollen theory better. Pollen was coming off the maple trees, she said. And that is what it was. Just pollen. Not pollution. She seemed pleased to have figured it out. 

A thing we agreed on was this: for this little favorite pond, today's particular episode might just be a "Best Ever." (And I remembered quite happily another Best Ever, one of the first times I got to photograph the pollen rainbows, up at the third pond.)

In the meantime, she said, there was training going on. Some new students were being brought into the fold. They were teaching them to ID and document the amphibians. As I walked away, I heard the one guy say to the two younger students, "And when they have these markings, like that, on the back, we call them FANCY PANTS!!"*

And so I was indeed laughing out loud to myself as I walked away, and I found the pollen rainbows at two more ponds on this morning. But by the third pond, the light was terrible, and the surface just seemed covered in some kind of whitish-gray haze. They need the LIGHT to turn the magic on!

But I was happy - so happy! - to have seen them all. And the first look, on my own little pond, a possible Best Ever, with the four people at the other end doing their research to try to help save the amphibs, and even FANCY PANTS, the salamander! 

The thought of all of it - wrapped up in a great big bow - made me so happy that I started dancing on the trail. My tunes box provided the soundtrack that I'll share with you now: Maren Morris, with Dancing With Myself. It's a wonderful reimagining of the Billy Idol frenetic original. Sing along if you like!

On the floors of Tokyo
Or down in London town to go, go
A-with the record selection and the mirror's reflection
I'm a-dancing with myself
Oh, when there's no one else in sight
A-in the crowded, lonely night
Well, I wait so long for my love vibration
And I'm dancing with myself
Oh-oh, I'm dancing with myself
Oh-oh, dancing with myself (oh-oh)
When there's nothing to lose, and there's nothing to prove (oh-oh)
And I'm dancing with myself, oh-oh, uh-oh


*And yes, as you might imagine, the lure of getting a photo of Fancy Pants was strong. But it felt like I would be intrusive to try to do so. So I stifled my photographer response, and walked on. THIS is why you are NOT looking at a photo of Fancy Pants the Salamander!