Green Mind Seeing

Standing Water

It's such an odd phrase to be applied to liquid. "Standing water". Right off the top of my head, water is the only thing I can think of to which "standing" or "stand" doesn't have some connotation of uprightness. A puddle of rainwater has no property that one typically associates with "standing"---unless it's standing and staring at it. It is most obviously a mirror on the ground, and often a mirror of the surrounding grounds, and the sky, and I suppose --- if you are an imaginative person such as myself --- a reflection of one's state of mind. There's so many possibilities in a puddle of water. I don't just mean whether to skirt around, wade through, or splash exuberantly. (Footwear, as much as frame of mind, influences my choices, but I'm inclined to get my feet wet, and usually get my feet wet whether I'm inclined to or not!)

Standing water in wild areas, or low-lying not-so-wild areas such as lawns, is somewhat enchanting and I'm less inclined to disturb the surface if what I see reflected pleases me. Blue skies after a rain make a blue puddle in the midst of an otherwise green field. A larger expanse of standing water may reflect not only the sky but clouds scudding across the surface....and is there anything more enchanting than upside down trees reflected so sharply and so clearly in the standing water of a low lying woodland area? It's not just like a mirror world, but an upside down mirror world. Who can resist peering long and dreamily into that image? Perhaps I have far too much imagination. (Is that possible? Too much imagination when so many people have too little to get by on?) Those broad expanses of water that one encounters in wooded or semi-wooded areas tempt me to look back and forth across the surface, mentally mapping the distant "shore" of trees with what I see reflected. Sometimes it's trickier than I think, with so many trees and grasses and shrubs. Sometimes the reflected world seems just ever so slightly different from the landscape I'm in. Sometimes the trees and shrubs and whole muddle of wildness doesn't seem to quite add up. (I was never very good at math.) In some wild places, reality is both compelling and superfluous. Compelling because there are so many precious details and wonders in the natural world. Superfluous because there are boggy spots with standing water which does not stand scrutiny if you focus on the reflections instead of the tadpoles, or floating leaves, or some other concrete detail. Reflections which render the world I inhabit wavy and shiny, with upside down mirror trees too sharp, shimmery, and numerous to count. A world so enchanting that the urge to just stand and stare over-balances the urge to wade in and shatter mirror. It's a world we can only enjoy by standing at the edge of our reality and gazing into standing water.