Frog Chorus

Tonight's self-imposed assignment was to write something incorporating the senses. I imagined taking a walk outside in the dark. I managed to use four of the five, but couldn't quite get taste in there. I think the prose is a bit overwrought, and I need to work on varying sentence structure and composition more.

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The frogs are singing tonight. No one has told them it's winter.

Their voices overlap in the dark: trilling, chirping, rumbling. One speaks from beneath a tree next to the creek trickling toward the bay. Its voice is a deep and throaty bass. Another answers from next to an overturned, weather-beaten canoe. Its response is a sharp and shrill amphibian soprano.

I cross the planks that serve as a makeshift bridge over the creek. My tennis shoes sink into the saturated ground on the other side where the tide has come and gone. A lingering brackish scent hangs in the air. The mud slurps as I lift my feet for each step forward. Moisture seeps through the fabric of my shoes, dampening my socks. I hold out my arms for balance. I'm afraid of tripping in the dark. I should have brought a flashlight, but I wanted the thrill of walking in the dark, wanted that little bit of safe danger afforded by having the warmly lit house just yards away. That's all the distance that separates the comforting civilization of the house from the wilderness, from moss-covered evergreens stretching toward the night sky, coyotes lurking in secret dens, rabbits nestling in overgrown thickets, and frogs singing in chorus from watery hollows.

The air bears the damp chill of spring, thought the calendar says that season is still weeks away. It's the kind of air that just a few degrees warmer or drier would feel balmy. But it isn't a few degrees warmer, and I'm just on the verge of shivering without a jacket. I like this damp cold. I feel primal and elemental as I trudge through the trees to the shoreline of the bay.