On a humid spring night last April, I went for a walk in Garber Park, a hillside forest on the eastern edge of Berkeley. In a stand of live oaks not far past the entrance my eyes happened to linger on a trailside log. And in a tiny hollow beneath the log’s base, reflected in my headlamp’s glow, were two gold-flecked black eyes and a dull pinkish snout.
I stopped for a closer look. The eyes belonged to a salamander: one Aneides lugubris, a species mostly native to the coastal oak woodlands of California and northern Mexico, more commonly known as an arboreal salamander. She—I didn’t actually know if the salamander was female, but preferred to guess rather than say it—took a step back on smoothly delicate legs but did not flee. I turned my headlamp to its red-light setting and sat beside the log to ponder: What is it like to be a salamander? To be this salamander?
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