By Sam Lambert
e·phem·er·al
/əˈfem(ə)rəl/
adjective
lasting for a very short time.
Ephemeral.
It’s a word that has captured a significant amount of my attention for the better part of two months. It’s one of those words that is common enough that it doesn’t raise eyebrows, but unique enough to catch your ear if you are listening. It’s one of those words that I knew the definition of, as an avid reader, but didn’t realize I was pronouncing wrong for quite some time.
I do this sometimes. I trip over a word that otherwise never felt significant and develop a fascination with it.
It began on an evening in late March. It was our first spring in this neighborhood and the rain and cold that had left us feeling claustrophobic let up for a day. We decided to go for a walk just before sunset when I noticed this shrill sound and turned to my husband and asked “Is that a car alarm or do you think it could be someone’s smoke alarm?”. He looked confused and responded, “Do you mean the frogs?”. There was no place in my mind where frogs explained the high pitched, incessant sound I was hearing.
As soon as I got home, I googled singing frogs… which turned out to be unnecessary because my social media feed was soon filled with “Peepers!”, “The peepers are singing, welcome Spring!”, and many, many more exclamations celebrating the return of frog songs. Maybe this had happened before and I had just tuned it out because I had no context? Maybe I attributed it to a problem with nosey neighbors in the poster’s neighborhood? I truly don’t recall ever hearing about these tiny chorus frogs, but that shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose. When we are inundated with information all the time, we are only registering the pieces that relate to or have some impact on our lives directly. Our brains can only take so much.
Back to my journey with the word ephemeral.
I soon started to see calls for volunteers to assist in salamander crossings. Another fascinating first for me. By the time these posts had shown up in my feed, I had missed the action, yet happily traveled down another rabbit hole. I am apparently surrounded by vernal pools, also known as ephemeral pools, breeding grounds for peepers, tree frogs, salamanders, and many more amphibious and invertebrate creatures. Volunteers signed up to go out at night, literally stopping traffic to make sure these animals could safely cross the roads we have built in their paths. These pools appear in spring as the snow melts and the rains come, disappearing by the end of summer. I spent so many evenings reading all that I could about how the temporary nature of these pools evolved so that fish would never occupy them, removing at least one threat. I was equally sad and overjoyed to learn about the need for salamander crossings. It’s a beautiful thing to see people show up for the vulnerable, but devastating to learn the reason why it is necessary and the enormity of the structural change that would be required to restore the path of their ancestral march.
One common use of my new favorite word was not a surprise to me; spring ephemerals. Those brief bursts of floral joy that can take you by surprise… and just as quickly leave you longing for the blooms of July. These are the often dainty flowers that seem to spring forth despite the weather, reminding us of all of the possibilities on our doorstep. I had never really considered their importance aside from the way their fleeting nature inspired a kind of gratitude. You often don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone. I soon learned that these early spring beauties evolved to provide nourishment to waking pollinators at a time of year when blooms, and thus food, are scarce. That knowledge somehow made their existence all the more sacred to me.
This word, ephemeral. It seemed to be everywhere all of a sudden. I found myself thinking of scale and time. What is this “very short time” the definition of ephemeral references? In political terms, the last administration seemed to be in office for a very short time. My children seemed to be small for a very short time. The lifespan of a human can feel like a very short time. While I avoided an existential crisis, I did reflect a lot on the impacts a very short time can have. I thought about how obstacles not of our making can be a threat to survival and how the kindness of strangers can help overcome some of these barriers. I considered how easy it is to miss that which doesn’t impact us directly and yet, that does not diminish its significance. I remembered to look around, even on the coldest, darkest days, because beauty does spring forth in the least expected of places.
The day's length is quickly increasing and the peepers' song (which I grew to love) has now been replaced by the nighttime call of an Eastern Whip-poor-will; a creature I again knew only from literary references until this year. I feel so fortunate to live in a place that has given me the time and space to be present, fully. I feel gratitude that despite living in a city, I am on the edge of an urban wood that has been protected through the advocacy and activism of people whose names I may never know. I have struggled with the knowledge that so many of my friends and community members don’t have this same luxury, for now. I have felt selfish at times for having needed this time of reflection in order to know where I can best focus my energy for the most impact. And then that word comes back to mind. I would like to make a suggestion that we add “ephemeral rest” to our vocabularies… lasting a very short time, while having an enduring impact. That we lighten the load others bear and we share the burdens we carry ourselves in order to allow the space to take this necessary, ephemeral rest. This is what community is built on and what will be necessary to carry us into the next season.