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# One Cast
- URL: https://essays.bluegreentheology.org/one-cast/
- Published: 2026-10-18T19:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-18T19:00:00.000Z
- Author: Gideon L. K. Pollach

On his first cast, Wood scared an eagle out of the tree above us.

We were conducting our continuing informal catch-and-release fish survey, since fishing is not allowed at the pond. Wood was home for a quick visit. We had a 6-weight line, twelve feet of it, and one woolly bugger on the end, a dependable combination for the survey. The air was crisp and the leaves were crackling. His line hit the water and something huge lifted out of the branches over our heads.

White head. That distinctive wing shape. There was no question.

The eagle was majestic. He was also very big and very close. We were not his target, but it was easy to see why he is the apex predator. Surprise came first, then a bit of fear, the prospect of death from above. He crossed the pond toward the woods behind the church and was gone.

This week a parishioner sent me a note from a conservationist about Stump Pond in Smithtown. The dam there gave way in August 2024 and the water left in a night. What has come up across the old pond floor is a native flower called nodding beggar ticks, from seeds no one knew were there. I’m told they can wait in pond mud for years.

The mud keeps records.

Our pond is high this week, and draining. On the still water the church stands twice, once on the hill and once upside down. We measure the level every day, and part of the measuring is for my nerves, while we wait on paperwork and engineering for the cofferdam. This work moves slowly.

We do not want to lose this pond.

We never get to see a whole community of living things rebuild itself. Counts at Stump Pond now list well over a hundred kinds of plants, and birds the park had never recorded. The wonder of it does not make those words easier to say. People who love Stump Pond disagree about its future, and I will leave that argument to them.

I don’t know what is in our mud and our lines never caught a fish. But we were surprised by what was in our branches. 

It took one cast.

**A Prayer**

God of the mud that holds its records and the branches that keep their secrets, you hold life in places we have called empty or lost. Teach us to trust the ground that keeps what we cannot see, and to look up when we are standing under something we do not know is there. Through Christ, whom the ground kept three days and could not keep. *Amen*.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9b/34/9b349e6d-b373-4e85-bdd1-e99162513daf/content/images/2026/10/IMG_4074-Large.jpeg)