Welcome to Leibenspiel! / One Good Thing
I LOVE a good spawn
Where I live, we are currently experiencing the annual heartache that we call “spring.”
More on that later.
Today, let’s talk “leibenspiel.”
You don’t know what leibenspiel is? I didn’t either, until three weeks ago, when I witnessed a natural phenomenon that was so challenging and charming that every time I think about it, I am filled with wonder.
But first, a little bit of backstory.
Jay and Stefania are friends from my long-ago time in Washington. They are “Cornell people” and a few times a year they come from Washington to this town to do Cornell things.
[Cornell’s handsome campus]
One of the joys of living adjacent to a nice college town is that some graduates form attachments to their alma mater and — no matter where they settle — these happy alums come back for visits that are charged with both optimism and nostalgia.
We natives don’t always share these attitudes toward our town, but that is to be expected. Anyone who lives in a place that is loved by others experiences a dynamic where you simply get used to your surroundings.
It takes a visitor to shake the blahs away.
And so it is with me and my Cornell friends, who fill their visits with hikes, waterfall visits, bird watching, and hockey games. [Go Big Red!]
I don’t do any of these things, unless they drag me along.
During their recent visit, they invited us to dinner at the lovely house they stay in, which is right next to Cornell’s big and sweeping campus.
The afternoon of the dinner, Stefania texted me:
“It’s spotted salamander night at the golf course after dinner.”
Not knowing whether Spotted Salamander was the name of a punk band or a specialty desert, I faked enthusiasm (my specialty).
We had a wonderful dinner, during which our apres-dinner activity was explained:
It seems that every early spring, when the temperature finally creeps above 40 degrees for more than a day, Spotted Salamanders leave their underground burrows and emerge onto the Earth’s surface in order to breed in vernal pools.
[Spotted Salamander, also known (not by me) as Ambystoma maculatum]
This results in a great migration, as these critters skitter to the nearest — or dearest — breeding ground.
On this particular night, the conditions were perfect for spotting a spotted salamander. It had been raining (filling those swampy vernal pools), and the temperature was a balmy 42 degrees.
After dinner, we grabbed flashlights and boots (I always seem to have a pair of boots in the car), and drove the very short distance to the campus golf course.
It was cool and a little creepy to be out and about at that time of night. I felt like a teenager sneaking out of the house during a slumber party.