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Showing posts from April, 2025

Bashō’s Frog

Furu ike ya Kawazu tobikomu Mizu no oto   A very old pond  A frog jumps into the air  Splash! sound of water   On the path to Ross Point, a rocky promontory by Loch Lomond skirted by the West Highland Way, there hides an enclosed bay no-one much visits, called the ‘the bay of frogs’ (or toads) from the Gaelic  Camas an Losgainn . I am curious about its name as frogs are infrequently seen, let alone named in the landscape – they occasionally cross our paths but mostly we miss their whole amphibious lives. Frogs and toads are quiet creatures that step purposefully but clumsily through the reedy grass and mosses, not wasting energy by jumping unless disturbed by human or heron. We see their signs more than we see them – the frogspawn laid on a warm spring night, or their crushed or withered bodies on a path. Their world is so utterly non-human, their camouflaged bodies and inscrutable golden eyes giving them an aura of stoic wisdom we like to personify as ugliness ...