Lift myself in a different place / Just leavin'

I camped on the shore of a pond where a big dead tree jutted out from the shore, and fell asleep each night to the banjo-tuning of dozens of green frogs and the stubborn denials of bullfrogs: "No. No. No. NO. NO!" Something in the dark, something big, swimming left-to-right past my site, kept slapping the water hard enough to send up a big gout of water. Later on I heard something blundering-splashing back into the water when I stood up too fast — and then again, ten minutes later, after whatever-it-was ventured up onto shore again. I never did lay eyes on it. Next morning, from out on the log, my camera and I watched a great blue heron hunting frogs, cantilevering its neck further and further out, me thinking every time that that was as far as it could go without falling over — and then, SMASH, that big sharp beak plunging into the weeds faster than I could follow. A big family of Canada geese milled through my campsite like they owned the place, same time both days, with a couple of teenage goslings jibbering their bills into the pine needles, winkling out whatever was there to be winkled. Hiking out in the woods, more frogs and toads — chocolate-brown and golden, and tiny peepers the size of crickets that moved just like crickets, too — and a pretty blue-bellied garter snake, thick in the middle, like she had a meal half-digested. Ten thousand mosquitos that ate Deet for appetizer, little red squirrels that thought I couldn't see them if they suddenly froze, and (as I was packing to go) a big black-plate turtle sunning himself up on the log with his chin lifted way up and forward on his snakey neck. He dove into the water when I moved, but when I looked up again five minutes later he was back.