Another gorgeous autumn morning, crisp and clear. The puppies were frisky and darted into the woods after something, in the direction of an upstream pond. I followed, relishing the tall grassy field, laughing at Belle hopping through it, and sighing when I saw the reflections on the surface of the water...
We made our way back to the road, back to our own driveway and headed for our pond, keeping an eye out for more photo-worthy beauty, like this...
I took my standard daily documentary photo of the damn dam, then glanced at our pond, surprised to see several white squarish blotches floating on the surface. They hadn't been there the day before and I saw nothing like them on the upstream ponds. I couldn't get close enough to touch one and didn't have time before work to find something to rake them toward me with, so I took several photos with my zoom. This is what I saw, only from farther away...
Back at the house, I transferred the files to the computer and cropped the images to get a closer look at the things, hoping they weren't what I thought they were... but the close-up photos convinced me it was what I feared - pieces of toilet paper....
Workers have been camped out there for weeks now... maybe even months, already. I never thought about this factor of camping out. Could they have dumped... ? I hated to think it, but after pumping oily water from their pond into ours even when we said no, it was easy to believe they did, and where else could it have come from?
Right away I made phone calls and sent the photos via email. I had learned not to waste any time on pond issues. Throughout the rest of the day, all I could think about was this nastiness in my pond, the clean-up, the time and expense of getting a lawyer.
The nastiness.
I had trouble catching my breath.
I came across a post by my blogging minister friend Pete about faith and I tried to focus on what he said, reminding myself that God would give us strength to deal with it, to do whatever needed to be done. I still couldn't catch my breath and I noticed a nagging pain beginning in my chest.
"They're leaves, not toilet paper," Tom told me as soon as I stepped in the door. He had gone down to examine them himself.
No way. I know a leaf when I see one. Not convinced, I followed him. He used a yucca spear to pull one close, but in the afternoon light, I could already see for myself: leaves.
But I still couldn't reconcile what I now saw with what I had seen that morning. Yes, these were leaves, but I just knew I'd seen toilet paper. I trudged all around the pond, looking close at the splotches with binoculars and checking the edges to see what had washed up.
Just leaves. Why ours is dotted with so many leaves when the ones upstream are clear, I don't know. But I couldn't deny it - they were just leaves and leaves alone, floating on the surface of our pond.
Normally I hate being wrong about anything, but this was such a relief. No nastiness in our pond. Just leaves. Well, still some crud flowing through the culvert from our neighbor's pond, plus some cans and bottles washed in from the flood a few weeks ago (thanks a lot), but otherwise, it was just a natural mess, not anything as nasty as I'd feared.
Such a huge, huge relief! I realized I could breathe again and the pain was gone. Right away, I sent out follow-up emails admitting my mistake. Humble, but happy. Mostly.
A sadness lingered... still lingers... that it was so easy for me to believe someone would do that to our pond, especially when I look at the photos now and see leaves...
