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Perspective: Where to find a salamander

I want to tell you about the blue-spotted salamander I found at the cabin last month.

 

First, I want to say that if I see a salamander, I’m going to pick him up. That’s just reflex. You can’t not hold such a creature. This one was living under the garbage can, by the garage.

 

If you see a blue-spotted salamander, it might, in that moment, become the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. It looks like a starry night in deep blue winter. Beyond the surface stars are just more stars, all the way back. But the creature is damp–salamanders are always damp–so it might be the reflection of the starry night you’re seeing in its skin, or the thing itself. I can’t decide. It’s five inches long, all that, right there under the garbage can.

 

In my childhood by the lake, I found exactly one salamander. It wasn’t a blue spotted one, but a black one with yellow spots. I found it at the lake dump, a kind of forbidden place where lake people took the things they didn’t want. Finding that salamander, I’ve learned, is one of the important things that has happened to me in my life. The salamander–the thing of measureless beauty–lived in an ugly place, where he didn’t seem to belong. The salamander turned the dump, in my mind, into a magic place.

 

I want to make sure it’s known that you’ll never find a salamander by looking for one. It just won’t happen in your life. Rare things, salamanders are always an unexpected gift. And when you find one again, under the garbage can this time, you’ll think, huh, of course he’s here, where I wouldn’t have thought to look.

Chris Fink is a professor of English and Environmental Studies at Beloit College. He is the author of Farmer's Almanac, A Work of Fiction.