Salamanders

Saturday afternoon Cerra and I walked to Point Pleasant Park. In brighter daylight the damage was more clear, the vacancy between the few remaining trees burned into my vision. The smell of cut pine filled the air along the path we entered on, and did not bring forth the warm memories it would in another setting. The scent was of tree-blood and tree-corpses.
Cerra’s shock at the altered park likely had more to do with the feeling of negative change, however. She has spent more time prior to the hurricane than I in the park, and she was quite distraught by all she saw. Though my handful of memories and deep love of forests made the damage very poignant, Cerra had countless more memories held in the branches of the fallen trees.
There was life amid the trees, however. We soon encountered several brave red squirrels as they scurried along the open ground beside the paths we followed. Cerra mentioned that she had read on a park website that salamanders were very common in the park. We commenced a search under rocks to uncover some. We were able to find two during our short visit to the park. You can find some photos of both the salamanders and the squirrels (as well as some photos of the forest itself) in Cerra’s photo album.

I learned that salamanders can be very quick when they choose to escape. Though they seem to always be stationary when their rocks are overturned, they have surprising agility. While holding the two salamanders we found in the park my reflexes were tested often, failing to catch the leaping creatures. I was impressed by both the beauty and speed of the small amphibians.
Driven by the facination the salamanders conjured up in me, I looked into the keeping of salamanders as pets. I was surprised to learn that newts and salamanders can thrive in household terrariums, and many endangered species have become more common in human homes than in their shrinking or destroyed natural habitats. Perhaps in the future I will bring one into my home.
The word “salamander” represented some distinctly different creatures to ancient peoples. A dictionary brought to my attention that the alternative meanings of a mythical creature, generally resembling a lizard, believed capable of living in or withstanding fire and in the occult philosophy of Paracelsus, a being having fire as its element also exist. Pliny, a historian and scientist of first century Rome, described the mythical salamander as “so intensely cold as to extinguish fire by its contact, in the same way that ice does. It spits out a milky matter from its mouth, and whatever part of the human body is touched with this all the hairs fall off, and the part assumes the appearance of leprosy.”
Salamanders were also said to produce asbestos (either as excretions or as their skins). Because of the nonflammable nature of asbestos and the believed like attribute of salamanders, it surely seemed a logical correlation to ancient peoples. One story from China tells that early traders there were told that certain cloths were woven from giant salamander wool. The clothing was actually made with asbestos.
Salamanders have stood as symbols of enduring faith, of courage that can not be destroyed, because of their myth. It’s fitting that such a creature would continue to survive in the decimated forest of Point Pleasant Park. Even as the park begins to recover, we can regain our faith in nature and the resiliency of life. Like the salamander endures great flames, so we and all of nature can endure our own hardships.