So Many Questions and Frogs in the Sky?

"Why is the sky blue?"
"Why are raindrops round?"
"Why do I have to go to bed?"
"Where do frogs go in the winter?"

These were probably some of the questions my younger sister asked as she trailed after me through the boreal bush behind our house. I don't remember details, it was so long ago and there were so many questions. So when she reached the peak question-asking age at four, my Polish immigrant parents sent her to me for answers. Their stated reason: I was 7 1/2 years older than her, and I was going to school here in Canada and so was most qualified to supply the answers. I quickly realized that was just a self-preservation tactic on their part. (See the link below for a Telegraph article on exactly how many questions a four-year-old girl can ask in a day.)

I'm not sure if this experience is the root of my perpetual curiosity, or if my own inner four-year-old never really went away.

Now I have questions like:

​"Why are human beings, who are so prone to slaughtering each other, also compelled to write poetry, make music and surround themselves with pets and houseplants?"

"What is Thelonius Monk all about, really?"

"How the h*** did Trump get elected?"

"Tree frogs, really, here in my own Northern Ontario backyard?"

I had an epiphany in high school chemistry when I finally learned the exquisite reason water droplets are round, why they bead up on a waxy surface, why water striders can skim along the surface of a pond without drowning.

Perhaps learning is not the right word. I SAW into the water. That's why this moment stands out brightly from the usual background of school learning, the kind where you read and try to understand a bunch of stuff so you can pass the next test.

I could SEE into the water molecules, see their slight polarity, one end having a small positive charge and the other a small negative charge (dipole). And I could see how they stuck together, the forces between them gathering them into a perfect sphere. Wax molecules have no partial charge, no attractive forces that could compete with the internal forces of the water droplet poised on their surface, so the water droplet keeps its form. And the water strider, with its hairy little feet, can skim along the resulting surface tension like a tiny acrobat on a trampoline.

​This summer I had a similar experience of suddenly being able to see into the natural world, and finding something completely new to me.

I don't know how I could have been so oblivious as to not notice them before. I've lived here in Nolalu for ten years now and have spent many hours outdoors and in the garden and never noticed these little fellows before. Perhaps the cool, wet spring we had made them more numerous than in previous years. Perhaps now that I'm retired from my day job, I'm more relaxed and observant. Who knows? I was delighted to find I could still experience that high of learning something new that brings the natural world a little closer.

One warm day in May, I was down on my hands and knees in one of my flower beds, engaged in my usual spring battle with quackgrass, alternately admiring and cursing its tenacious hairy roots drilling their way through the hard clay soil. After a while I got the feeling of being watched. A few inches from my face, a pair of bright black eyes peered at me from a leaf. A little green frog the size of my thumbnail stared at me from a jumble of weeds. I dropped my weeding tools and ran into the house for my camera and spent the next ten minutes lying on my belly by the flower bed. A few minutes with Dr. Google and You Tube and I had identified the grey tree frog (Hyla versicolor). I learned to recognize their song, a dry chirping high in the trees and saw several during the summer, often in the flower beds, but once, a larger adult was camped in the shade of our propane tank lid. They are nocturnal, catching bugs high in the trees at night, resting nearer the ground during the day. They can also tolerate sitting in the sun without drying out. See if you can spot the two sunning themselves on the daylily leaves.

I was a bit sad when they stopped appearing later in the summer, though I thought I could recognize their song at night high in the trees around our house.

In September, we finally had a chance to get our camper out on the road. My husband had recovered from some surgery and we felt we could use a short camping trip to Rainbow Falls Provincial Park. The campground was almost empty and the evenings were very quiet. As I walked to the comfort station late one evening, I thought I heard a familiar sound. High in the poplar and birch trees, just out of reach of the yellow halogen light flooding the open space around the building, a familiar chirping. Couldn't be. Out here? Tree frogs. Didn't seem right. Mid-September and the evening was cool. But what else could it be? Not crickets. No bird I could think of made that sound. 

When I came out of the bathroom, the trees were silent. 

No range map I have found shows grey tree frogs north of Lake Superior, and I could not find any references that say they sing into the fall. I could be mistaken. But the delight of seeing in my mind's eye a canopy of frogs singing into the night sky is still with me. 

Next summer I will listen more closely, be more observant. And maybe I will see more.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9959026/Mothers-asked-nearly-300-questions-a-day-study-finds.html