As froglike jolts signal big life changes, Lucy Underwood considers her proximity to the natural world.

My eyes dart to the silhouette of a bat that cuts across the sky. A brief encounter like a short, sharp spark of a lighter. You can never be too sure if you saw it or if it was all but a tired mind’s trickery. The sound of their wings clipping the air is often the only confirmation that they were there, if only for a second. 

It is the night before my 22nd birthday; this year everything has changed. The lights across the bridge illuminate the water that warps in dizzied yellow circles. Two more bats assume their place in the sky. I’m not sure what they are –perhaps Pipistrelles. I sit with my legs up to my chin, watching the quick flashes of black deepen an already dark sky. I can hear the high-pitched clicks as they fold and dive, skimming the water as they catch their food. These are the loudest I’ve heard. 

A lone goose floats past the buoy in front of me, unexpected but welcome. I feel a jolt in my low tummy, and then another — the same felt in cupped hands when you’ve caught a frog. I’d often scoop them out of the pond as a child, peering through a tiny gap between my thumbs at the small green creature that had just been snatched into the sky. Except this is not a frog, but a baby, that I am now half way to meeting. I feel like I, too, have been dragged out of the water and thrust into something unknown. It’s a strange kind of wonder, the way fear and excitement can exist together. 

I think about all the days I will be able to bring him to see the waterside, teach him about the birds that glide along in front of us — the ducks and the drakes — and all the different seasons that he’ll experience here, while I wrestle two fat pink plums into socks. My life in recent years has consisted of mostly being outside: usually with an ID guide, sometimes with nothing, and trying to learn as much as I can, trying to cram as many species names — types of leaf, berry, bug — into a head that is filled by the fear of what’s next, of growing up, of entering adulthood. Technically I’m three years down, and still feel I belong to the realm of childhood. 

Now, a year older: soon a new layer, a new life — and one that I’m responsible for. It’s a big ask, at 22 — I’m still learning for myself. What if he asks me the name of a beetle and I don’t know it, what if I can’t answer why the sky is blue, why ladybirds poo little blobs of yellow? I wonder if I’ll be able to continue my passions with a baby, whether I can still write in my free time about the nature reserves I’ve been to, or the berries that ripen on the bush outside, or whether he’ll like all the trips I’ve planned for us to go on. I don’t want to smother him with another leaf rubbing or plea to go pond dipping, but I want him to care about the same things I do, be curious about the natural world, as we all should be. 

I’m thinking about names to distract myself — Robin, maybe, or Rowan. I want something bold, but unassuming — not quite a Latin species name no one can pronounce, or one that sounds like a spell, but something memorable, and earthy. Another bat clicks ahead of me and I watch as it melts into the trees, camouflaged by the row that stands sentinel, slightly contorted by the gloam. It reappears and snaps the air, which is still warm and full of promise.

Tomorrow I celebrate another year. By my next birthday, I’ll be a mother.

 For now, I sit in the last, quiet hour before the new day, watching the goose drift on towards the bridge, the water moving behind it in small hushed laps, letting the future come gently. 

*

Lucy Underwood is a passionate young writer and naturalist who tries to reconcile the divide between humans and nature through writing, and hopes to better understand the world through writing about it.