Fairfax Vernal Pools

2021 Exploration of local vernal pools

With expert guidance, we visited a number of vernal pools around the Accotink Creek watershed, observing and learning. This video documents those explorations among the small miracles that are these ephemeral waters, home to frogs, salamanders, and a host of other small creatures dependent upon their continued existance.

Filming courtesy of Fairfax Master Naturalist & Filmmaker Kathryn Pasternak, Pasternak Media.

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.

The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods -
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
- Robert Frost -

Let's all of us heed the poet and think twice before we use our powers to "sweep away these flowery waters" for human convenience.

More vernal pool resources: