Pools are present in most of my earliest childhood memories. Not all of them, but a big chunk of the good ones. A clear blue pool in a clear blue sky. my father the size of a titan, hoisting me onto his shoulders and then throwing me in. Standing on the concrete, staring down at the frog eggs, dragonflies delicately balancing on the water’s surface. Playing mermaids, ducking down for as long as possible as horseflies buzz overhead.
In "Annihilation" by Jeff Vandermeer the protagonist is a biologist. She at some point tells us about what sparked her passion for biology. The ecosystem she studied as a child. It was a pool in the background of her childhood home. Her parents let it fall into disrepair, and soon frogs moved in (as they are wont to do), and then snakes followed the frogs, and then she dumped some fish in there and from there the thread unravels. Grass, rabbits and mice, bugs, birds, including large water birds. A heron.
Herons are a good gauge for how "wild" an area is. I live in Arkansas, and as I love to remind people, it's a swamp. Sometimes I'll hear "well maybe over there, but not so much over here." But it was. The highway passes past so many creeks and ponds. A bunch of trees were recently cut down and so my mom is complaining about floodplains. Before there were people, there were herons. They only exist towards the fringes of where people are. Move towards herons, move away from humanity.
I used to play in the creek behind my papa's house a lot. It was my version of the biologist's backyard pool. Creeks change a lot, especially small ones that are mainly forgotten, winding behind houses. I know for a fact the creek flows south into the deep rain pits by the road. I know a little bit west, just past the rusted remains of barbed wire, past a thick cluster of trees, is a pond. I've heard there's a pond up north, past the neighborhood bounds, that feeds into the creek. I know that the edge used to be on the opposite side when I was a kid, that rabbits take refuge in the fallen over trees, snakes take shelter over the tarp covering the pool, and that the tulips my grandmother planted have spread all over.
My papa built a bridge over it, because his shed was on the strip of grass before the trees. Far as I know, his shed is only one of the few clear patches of grass along that whole creek. I'm told to not think of the trees in that area as a "forest" and that even calling it "the woods" is a bit generous. Just a thick bit of trees that if you theoretically walked through you could get to the trailer park. "There’s houses less than half a mile that way!" my mother tells me. But it was like a peninsula of a forest. I know that farther north, towards the pond, it was a proper woods.
I still visit my papa's a lot. And most times when I'm there, I go out to the creek. When I still lived there, I spent a lot of time on the back porch. The air is crisp out there, especially in late summer. I spent countless hours staring at the stars, following the paths the squirrels take in the treetops, cataloging the regulars at the fence. I know all the species of songbird, the raptors, the snakes, and frogs, living in the strip of wild that bumps against humans.
One day I saw a heron out in the creek. My mom was trying to show me and my sibling her pool revival project, but we were mostly standing around chatting and catching up. Out of my periphery I saw a large bird take off, and as is my nature I chased off to identify it. I was looking at the banks and down towards where it turned from "creek" to "rain trench" when it took off. It had been only 30 feet ahead of me, standing near the base of the tree. My searching spooked it off, and it took flight and it felt as though in three or four flaps of its magnificent wings it disappeared. But in the fading light of the day I saw it and had enough time to witness its beauty. My family was still by the porch, they didn't see it. They didn't care to hear about how I had seen a heron.
In Annihilation, there’s a few spots the biologist returns to when reminiscing on her life outside of Area X. One of them, of course, the pool. But also the coastline, tide pools, one of the last field jobs she had. There’s also the abandoned lot nature had taken back that she visited to get space from her husband. Walking away from her home, and the loneliness held within it, to focus on a self contained ecosystem. She is the only human present, the only one witnessing the machinations of this bubble.
I have my own pool. My parents had a neglected backyard. It started with the pool, then the frogs, then the grass, and the snakes. We had outdoor cats and so I knew very well what lived in those tall grasses. I remember calling it “a self contained ecosystem” to my roommate. We moved down the road with my grandparents when I was 11. My parents had gotten divorced, my dad ended up selling the house. The grass was cut, the fish removed, and the pool renovated. But I haven’t seen it again. I still have the creek though.
My grandmother passed away in October of 2019. Most of her houseplants have died, as well as the old black cat that lived with my grandparents for as long as I can remember. The bridge my grandfather built has been decaying for years. There used to be a Japanese maple tree in the backyard, where the extension was put in when we moved in. There has always been nature in that area. My grandmother used to call me out of my room, to look out at the deer that had gathered at the edge of the trees. After she died her presence continued to haunt the house. The emptiness left behind was tangible. The plants at the creek have become overgrown, and now there must be something there for the herons. At least enough for one to venture away from the larger pond upstream, to skirt around the border of my family.
The biologist doesn’t directly say that the pool was her refuge, same as the frogs and mice. That to study the pool was to escape an uncaring home. To study the coast to escape a job soon to end, and the fleeting connections she makes in the town nearby. To study the bugs in an abandoned lot to escape her failing marriage. But at the pool, and the coast, and the forgotten corner, she could as apart from her loneliness. Witnessing nature makes you a part of it. A part of something, when you can't be a part of humanity.