Freedom to Roam is Patagonia’s current environmental campaign. Its goal is to create, restore and protect wildways or corridors between habitats so animals can survive.

Backyard Corridors

Freedom to Roam wants to preserve and protect big wildways for large animals. But we also want to help all of us better understand what a corridor is, and what it means to animals that live near you. So, we're kicking off Backyard Corridors: We want to hear from you about what wildlife is roaming through your backyard, neighborhood, or town and what are some of the issues they face. Each week, we'll ask a different question about animals and corridors on our Facebook page, blog and in our retail stores.

To kick things off, we asked a few friends to tell us about animal corridors in or near their backyards. We look forward to reading your stories on our blog and Facebook page.

Frog Highway
By Martha Sherrill

He was so huge, the biggest green frog I’d ever seen. And he was sitting – utterly motionless -- on a stone step leading down to our front door. He was a long way from the upper pond. Was he okay? Our spaniel was barking at him, barking and barking. But the frog was strangely calm. I wondered if he was sick.

Maybe he’s dying, I thought. He’s so huge. He must be a million years old.

I dragged the dog by the collar to get him into the house. I was afraid he’d pick up the frog and start tossing him in the air, the way he tosses around half-dead mice, chipmunks, the occasional baby skunk. By the time I returned to the stone step -- to bend over the big frog, to swoon at him with my human pity, my ideas about his advanced age and imminent death --- he began to hop away.

His hops were high and long. His sense of direction seemed flawless. A frog in his prime. He was aiming for the southeast corner of our house. He landed gently on the grass, where he blended in, and then he exploded into the air like a green missile.

He turned the corner, almost hugging the curve in midair. He continued on, down a slope of ground that let to another pond, below our house. I’d come across other frogs in our south garden and figured they were lost hikers. But now I realized there was a frog highway that connected the two ponds.

Later that summer, when ducklings were born in the lower pond, their mother would lead them through the woods on the north side of our house. They’d walk in a row, single-file, like obedient school children, heading toward the upper pond to swim.

So we had two corridors, as far as we could tell. The ducks, before they learned to fly over us, traveled on the north side. The frogs use the south. Had they worked out a traffic flow pattern between them? Our house began to feel like a toll booth, except there’s no toll to pay. They just have to get by our dog. And they always do.

Martha Sherrill is the author of four books including Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain, the powerful and inspiring saga of a man widely credited with preserving the Akita dog breed in the snow country of Japan during World War II.

(Top Image) A green frog from the Sherrill pond. Green frogs, peepers and tree frogs use their highway. Photo: Martha Sherrill

(Bottom Image) Ducklings in the Sherrill pond. Photo: Martha Sherrill