We follow him blindly down an overgrown trail, oak branches whipping at our faces and low blueberry bushes and greenbriers catching at our pant legs. The pond is about an acre and nearly round, a common characteristic of the kettle ponds left when massive shards of glacial ice melted in the original sands of the island. The shoreline has receded several feet with the drought, leaving a carpet ring of fresh grasses and stunted ferns, brightened by the tiny flowers of blue toadflax. There's a thin inner ring of very shallow black water showing only a few sprigs of leafy three-square. Bees buzz inches above this in a chaotic holding pattern.
Electric blue darning needles flit from foothold to foothold.
At the opposite end of the pond grows a small patch of cattail reeds. A bird house mounted on a post stands at the transition between reeds and pads, evidence of conservational oversight. With Senna settling at his feet and Doc on the prowl, Jeff sets his tripod up and mounts his camera. By the time the sun fully breaks above the horizon, underlighting the puffs of macherel sky that stretch west toward 'Sconset, I have a decent rough of the pond. I start a detail sketch of three interlocking pads.