Mary’s Present

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A warm southeast breeze was rising as Mary Kelly parked her car and walked across the thin ridge of sand that divided the marshy pond from the open Bay. The tall cattails and pampas grasses waved like a field of wheat, their movement making a reedy rustling symphony beneath the chirping of the frogs and the occasional bird song. She searched the edge of the grasses for the spit of sand projecting out into the dark, brackish waters that would mark the beginnings of the path to Jake’s shack. A few steps into the jungle of growth was enough to reveal that the path was clear, however, and she soon encountered the first plank on the long walk to Jake’s shack.

Once among the grass, any cooling that she had from the breeze disappeared. In late August the marsh was redolent with life and the heady smells of rotting fish and decaying vegetation, all vital to the cycle of life in the Bay. A swarm of buzzing flies and mosquitos rose about her, their thin keening cries a bothersome noise in her ears. It was their larvae that fed the aquatic life of the marsh. They were the bottom rung of macrolife at the start of their lives and fed on the top rung as adults. Without the halo of insect life the marsh would die, and the Bay would soon follow. That was one of her responsibilities; to see that all the essential forms were preserved and cherished.

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