Jake’s Pond

Fr. Dale Matson

One of the reasons God created ponds was to have a place for boys to explore and that’s just what Tom Hardy and I did on hot summer days over several years. A pond contains more genuine adventure than Atari and Xbox combined. A pond is zoology 101. Today, ponds are thought of as ecosystems but we saw Jake’s pond as a place for adventures.

Jake’s pond was in the back forty of his property away from his house on Tipsico Lake Road and west of Tipsico Lake.  Jake arrived shortly after God built Tipsico Lake where Tom’s family lived and my family had a summer cabin. Jake spun stories of fish too big to be measured by a yard stick and the “old” days when he had to lead his horses out to the middle of Tipsico Lake just to get them a drink.

Jake liked Tom and me and we had a special dispensation from him to explore his pond whenever we wanted. This included harvesting all the elderberries we could carry to be processed as jam at home. Poachers tried to sneak in late at night to get the Bull Frogs. Jake had special shot gun shells with rock salt instead of lead pellets waiting for them.

In the spring the red wing black birds would begin nesting in the cattails of the pond and it would mean the pollywogs were soon to follow. We would wear our bathing suits and Converse All Stars to walk through the muck of the pond to collect them in mason jars. Yes, we put several holes in the lid using a finishing nail and a hammer. All critters need air! Ponds have a certain smell to them that literally shouts to your senses, “There’s lots of stuff here.”  An occasional Blue Heron would watch from a comfortable distance, as we looked for newts and salamanders. I don’t remember seeing any big fish in the pond and think that in the winter; the pond may have frozen too deep for larger fish.

We would also catch Painted turtles with the requisite leeches attached to them. We avoided the snappers and the musk turtles. We were always on the lookout for a Blanding’s turtle which was a rare find. Even when the turtles dove to the bottom of the pond to avoid us and buried themselves in the mud, the telltale bubbles would betray their location.  We used table salt to rid ourselves of the leeches that stuck to us when we got home. There were also leopard frogs along the shore area above the pond that migrated there from the pond to finish their life cycle on land. We would capture garter snakes with big lumps in the middle that were once frogs. There were also blue racers around but harder to catch than garters. What we called “Water Scooters” would skim across the surface of the pond ahead of us as we walked.

And what did we do with our treasures? Like “Bring Em Back Alive“ Frank Buck, we took them back to Tipsico Lake and released them in the rocks along the shore of Tom’s house. We thought we were creating an aquatic menagerie but fresh tracks suggested that nightly visits by Raccoons were culling our transplants.

We had a special mission for our captured turtles. We would set them free in Tipsico Lake but not before painting our initials T.H. or D.M. on the back so all of those along the lakeshore would know that the great hunters were engaged in the primary work of boys; exploration, adventure and subduing wildlife. School was an unwelcome seasonal interruption in our real vocation. In the fall, we would harvest some of the cattails, soak them in kerosene and use them for torches.

The pond is still there but Jake’s house is gone. In its place are big fancy houses. I hope those families have children who explore Jake’s pond too.

If you paste the following location in Google earth or Google Maps, you will see Jake’s pond.

42 43 2.9 n 83 41 12.97 w.