The Voice of The Caterpillar

I walked with our old brindle boxer along the single lane road curving through the Cape Cod National Seashore. We circled around the puddles from a downpour earlier in the day; the dog doesn't like water. As we descended the next hill, my eye caught the different coloring on the trunks of the oaks – a mosaic pattern almost as if there was a thick growth of brown lichen. It made me think of the African Kuba cloth, fuzzy raised dark brown patterns on a background of raffia. But this wasn’t textile art; this unusual raised patterning was thousands of two-inch long caterpillars, affixed vertically to the oak bark.

Caterpillars and Kuba Cloth

I heard the falling bodies of other caterpillars from branches high above, the sound like leftover rain drops from still wet leaves. I looked up and saw that the oaks had no leaves; the only green in the sky belonged to the scrub pines. I had never before seen such an assembly of caterpillars, nor so many bare-branched trees.

Later, when my husband, Blase, arrived, I told him about the caterpillars as we stood on the porch of the cabin. He pointed out the line of damage. Like the frontlines of war, he could distinctly see the line between the denuded trees and the green leafy ones. I wondered what causes such specific demarcation and whether the trees near the cabin have more access to water and are healthier. Or was it just the slow movement, the adagio, as the caterpillars make their way eastward, traveling slowly, moving deliberately, ravaging completely.

I touched a few and was surprised; there was no squirming. Were they dead? Dying? Tired of growing? I wanted to know more about their life cycle. I knew these were Gypsy Moth caterpillars and that at some point they would become pupae, but would they move into this next stage in this position, clinging to the trunk, all of them head down, or would they burrow in the ground, or go elsewhere? I wanted to know about their particular life cycle.

In this small cabin in the woods, there is no internet.  But there is a bookshelf, and I picked out an orange hardcover book, one of a series called “How-to Know” —  this one “How to Know the Insects,” with a copyright of 1947. In the chapter on Lepidoptera, the order of butterflies and moths, there were descriptions of quite a few moths: the Little Wood Satyr, the Squash Borer, the Luna Moth, even the Casemaking Clothes Moth, which constructs a cloth case around itself from chewing up cloth. The book suggests, as an experiment, to put the moth in a metal box with only one color of cloth. Then change the color of cloth from time to time, and see how the moth constructs a variegated colored case. All of this was interesting, but not helpful in my understanding of the life cycle of the Gypsy Moth.

I returned the book to the shelf, slipping it back between How to Know the Trees and How to Know the Wildflowers, and looked for a more current book. On the same shelf I found, A Pocket Guide to Insects, with a section on moths. This book mentioned sixteen interesting moths, among them the lovely White Ermine, all white with a few black dots, and a fur ‘ermine’ stole covering her neck and head. She could be a princess in a fairytale, who was changed into a moth while awaiting her flame. She even had orange spots on her belly, announcing to the world that she is not to be eaten. There was also a photo of the lovely, bright red and black patterned, Cinnabar Moth, original to Europe and Asia, but brought to America to control ragweed, a plant that is toxic to cattle. The Cinnabar Moth eats ragweed like I eat popcorn at the movies — rapidly and non-stop. Caterpillars multiply their body size two or three thousand times in only a few weeks before they transform to the pupa stage.  Alas, there was no mention of the Gypsy Moth. I’m beginning to wonder why no one writes about it. If only could look it up on the internet, or like Alice, ask the Caterpillar.

I returned A Pocket Guide to the Insects to the shelf, and looked quickly to see if I had missed another lead. I noticed biologist David George Haskell’s book, The Forest Unseen. In this book, Haskell visits every few days for a year a meter square of old growth forest in the mountains of Tennessee. In one day’s entry, he describes how a moth alights on his finger, and stays, unfurling its delicate proboscis as it draws up a minuscule amount of salt from the sweat in between two finger print lines. Caterpillars get everything they need from eating leaves, except salt, which they must find elsewhere. When a male moth mates with a female, he passes a packet of sperm as well as a packet of food, which, most importantly for the yet-to-be-born caterpillars, contains salt. The female passes on the salt to her eggs and thus to the caterpillars. Nowhere in his book does Haskell mention the Gypsy Moth.

When I had had enough of the horrific sight of so many caterpillars, I guided the dog towards a fresh water pond. Our dog, who is terrified of water, was so hot that he gingerly put his paws into the pond. He even began wading up to his belly, nosing around under the bayberry. He seemed mesmerized by the shifting patterns of plant shadows, the water sliders, and watched along with me, small sunfish.

Bruschi in Horseleach Pond

We saw four sunfish hanging out over their own collection of small pebbles, each one ringed by a dike of sand. The sunfish were clearly protecting their eggs, but how did the eggs get to be under the stones? I could imagine the sunfish moving sand with a tail fin, but not pushing pebbles. There’s so much I don’t know!

Books are helpful; even the oldest ones add to our braided rope of knowledge. But I know that the only way I will truly learn will be by watching. I will need to see the sunfish earlier in the year when she is preparing her nest. And I will have to check back on the caterpillars in a few days, and a few days later still. That’s why I am so slow to truly learn about all the insects in the apple orchard. It takes years of repeated observation.

On our last walk on the Cape, the dog and I strolled down to the pond again. While he poked his head into the reeds, I watched a sunfish hovering over her eggs, open her mouth, pick up a three-inch stick, and swim it out of the nest. Spring cleaning! Then she came back, lowered herself almost to the pebbly bottom, and began twitching, rhythmically wriggling her fins and tail, clearing fine debris off the nest. Over my shoulder I heard a voice I thought I recognized as Alice’s Caterpillar, “There’s only this — your experience.”

And I had to agree.

Goumi — An Unusual Fructus

A few days ago I had the pleasure of tasting my first farm-grown fructus of the season, goumi berries, a new fruit for the orchard. I knew the berries were ripe from their red-orange translucent color and the ease of release from the stem. Goumi berries have an astringent tartness with the first bite (I briefly wondered whether I should be eating them), but once through the skin, the inner flesh holds a citrusy sweetness. I lingered over the oblong seed, turning it in my mouth, and sanding off the last bit of fruit with my tongue before spitting it to the ground. Goumis remind me of mulberries, and I imagine, like mulberries, goumis would be delicious in pies, sauces, and jellies.

The goumi, Elaeagnus multiflora, comes from China. Its leaves are silvery below and glossy green above, similar to its sister plant, Elaeagnus umbellate, an invasive in America which grows up to twenty inches high and thirty inches wide, outcompeting native plants for sun and nutrients. Goumis have an Old World look that suggests they’ve been around a long time. No tender hybrid, but a strong matriarch who grows wide around the middle and rules her household.

I can attest that the plant grows on its own without much attention. The Asian pear orchard completely got away from me last year. When my daughter, Ariel, and I finally hacked our way through it last fall to liberate the young pear trees, the purple asters, bee balms, and other wildflowers were over six feet tall. (Some of you may recall the blog in which I described experimenting, once again, with creating a natural orchard.) By design, there is no access for the riding mower, and I didn’t get myself back there with a scythe or sickle. The goumis came through this neglect, strong as ever, growing three feet and flowering this spring with sweet scented delicate white blossoms for the first time. Many of the pears, on the other hand, suffered from so much competition — I promised them I would to do better this year.

I first heard about goumis though the permaculture world. Goumis are considered good companion plants for an orchard because they are nitrogen fixers. That is, like clover and vetch, they work with bacteria in the soil to make nitrogen accessible for themselves as well as nearby roots. I planted four goumi bushes in our Asian pear orchard with the hopes that the pears would then not need any additional outsourced nitrogen. Goumis are also touted for being an “insectory,” meaning they attract beneficial insects who might ward off orchard pests. Goumis make a hardy hedge and provide great bird watching early in the season. However, if you are hoping to harvest goumi fructus, you will need to cover them before the birds enjoy them all.  Our English word fruit is derived from fructus, one of the verb forms of the Latin, fruor ("have the benefit of, use, enjoy"). Eating fructus we enjoy the miraculous bounty of nature

Sweet Hay the Clown, Sculpture LH

Concord, an American Bloomsbury

Lidian Emerson was the wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose life is chronicled in Susan Cheever’s delightful book, American Bloomsbury along with Concord friends, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. Cheever writes about their jealousies, passions, hurts, and joys. It’s a fascinating picture of mid-nineteenth century Concord, and the lives of these families who populated its now historical houses; a sweet glimpse into the real lives of these larger-than-life people.

There are lovely moments such as when we see Louisa, a student at Thoreau’s school, floating down the Concord River with Henry — falling in love with a silent schoolgirl crush. We learn of Emerson’s admiration and love for Margaret Fuller, much to the consternation of Lidian, as well as the jealous fury of Hawthorne, who was also in love with Margaret, and modeled his strong women protagonists after Margaret Fuller, not his own wife, Sophia, a talented painter, but whose health was uncertain, the result of mercury administered as treatment for severe headaches when she was a teenager.

The Hawthornes came and went from Concord. They were chased out of Salem after the publication of the ‘scandalous’ book, The Scarlet Letter; and they had to leave the Berkshires for ‘stealing’ the landlord’s apples. But they always returned to Concord, and always with Emerson’s help. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the kingpin of the community — and he financially supported just about everyone, especially the Alcotts who always needed money. Bronson Alcott’s efforts to support his family were often fruitless, (like his experiment in intentional living, Fruitlands).

In Cheever’s portrayal of Concord Bloomsbury, we witness a circle of friends struggling with their health and the daily necessities of life, while at the same time devoted to their art and to each other. What we now call The Transcendentalist Movement can be seen as a medley of casual interactions. No transcending; only a certain self-reliance, a belief in the individual, and a grounding in the reality of everyday life —bird calls, wildflowers, and rent to pay. Some of the friends would go to Europe, or to Washington, but they always came home to Concord. Except Margaret Fuller. After several years in Europe, the first woman foreign correspondent for The New York Tribune, she was sailing on the boat, Elizabeth, to return to her New England roots with an Italian count husband and infant son, when their boat hit a sandbar and sank off of Fire Island, New York. The Concord Bloomsbury group had suffered death and illness before. Waldo, Ralph Waldo and Lidian’s beloved young son died, and the Alcott’s lost their youngest sister; but this was a big shock to the community — the loss of the unstoppable, trailblazing Margaret Fuller.

Thoreau wrote his experimental paean to nature, Walden, as well as the many volumes of writing we treasure today. Sophie Hawthorne and Lidian Emerson put their own artistic and intellectual pursuits aside to take on the more traditional family roles. Louisa May Alcott taught and wrote because it was the one way she could earn money to help feed her family. Apparently, she never wanted to write intimately about her family life, but her father and his publisher friend demanded it — thus we have Little Women.

With hindsight we can see that Louisa May Alcott’s writing about the everyday thoughts and occupations of women was revolutionary. She made this unseen domestic world of women as important as the world of politics and philosophy. In fact, along with Thoreau, she ignited the popularity of the genre we now call ‘memoir.’  They both made everyday moments significant, and through them revealed transcendent truths.

When it came to politics they were sometimes wrong — praising the likes of John Brown who, with his sons, murdered in cold blood to further their cause against slavery, mistaking the end and the means. They were human, frail, vulnerable, and passionate. I can only cheer and thank them for the legacy they left behind. And apples, oh yes, there are apples sprinkled here and there. Cheever writes, the day of “Hawthorne’s funeral at the end of May back in Concord was white with apple blossoms . . . .” 

Before Emerson left for a long tour in Europe, at Lidian’s request, he asked Thoreau to leave his cabin near Walden Pond and stay at their home to help Lidian with running the house, and taking care of the children and grounds. Thoreau obliged, and Lidian and Henry David found solace with each other. He was still mourning the tragic loss of his brother a few years earlier to lockjaw from a small cut. When Emerson returned, Thoreau moved out, and the two men’s relationship became distant. Thoreau turned all his attention to his meticulous study and writing about nature, publishing his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and five years later, Walden. Thoreau died of Tuberculosis, a disease he first contracted when he was a teenager. Thoreau’s funeral was on May ninth. As with Hawthorne’s, the apple trees may have been in bloom. Emerson, in his eulogy said, “The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost.”  I imagine Lidian must have been truly saddened by his death. With Thoreau, she shared her sharp wit, intelligence, and passionate, liberal views.

The original wood for my tribute sculpture, Lidian’s Harp, came from a pile of felled trees in Walden Woods destined for firewood, a gift from the caretaker of the property. He knew I was on the lookout for tree harps, the name for these spiral shapes formed by trees.

Carving the wood to create a smooth interior.

I always credited Thoreau with the term, however, when I looked through Thoreau’s writing for the reference, it didn’t exist.  After discussion with the director of the Thoreau library, I finally accepted that I must have been thinking of Thoreau’s love for the ‘Aeolian harp,’ the harp that plays music when you put your ear to a telegraph pole and listen to the sounds made by the wind playing the wires. Tree Harp, I guess, is my own invention, but it feels more like the mystical influence of the Concord Bloomsbury.

The World Is Bonkers — Shall I Laugh or Cry?

Last week I wrote about Bonkers, the revolutionary apple – but unknown to me – the Atlantic, two weeks earlier, published an article, Why So Much is Bonkers Right Now. The Atlantic mentioned at least ten references to this imported British word. For example, Mother Jones had recently reassured its readers: “It’s Not Just You . . . This Week Was Bonkers,” referring to the latest Trump charades. And Vox used the word to describe Netflix’s newest film, Okja: “a bonkers corporate satire staring Tilda Swinton and a superpig.” I saw a two-page spread advertising the film in the New Yorker magazine. The image, a young woman leading a giant creature with a factory building as its saddle spewing out pollution from one of three smokestacks, was so fascinating I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes and found that it is a story of an extraordinary human animal bond threatened by capitalist consumers. 

The Atlantic article also mentions the word Bonkers’ first use on American soil in 1965, when an American film reviewer of the film Paranoia used the word to describe “Marcello Mastroianni as going slowly bonkers while sharing a bath, bed, and Bedouin with three co-stars.” In the 1980s, there was a candy named Bonkers. Its commercial takes the prize for worst of its kind, but you can watch it here. And there is a recent memoir by the comedian Jennifer Saunders, Bonkers: My Life in Laughs. What is the appeal of this Bonkers everyone is using? Zany, crazy, madcap, screwy, wacky? The Atlantic article ended with an appreciatory note, saying that this British word is “uniquely suited to this American moment: a time when news can be so often confusing, and overwhelming, and, all in all, a little bit bonkers.” 

Yet to describe our world as Bonkers doesn’t feel right. After the Manchester killings and the London Bridge savagery, the world is not Bonkers, but alarming. Withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Accord is equally horrifying. Bonkers is a non-judgmental adjective; it resists condemnation. Faced with the harsh reality of innocent lives lost, the continued devastation of people’s homes from war and terrorism, and the loss of species and habitat because of climate change, Bonkers doesn’t describe the depth of suffering in our world.

Yet, at the same moment that devastation is happening all around, I watch young children skip merrily before climbing aboard a big yellow school bus and bike down our street with fishing rods tucked under their arms, knowing nothing about the follies of their parents’ generation. I feel similarly protective of the spotted brown and white eggs in a small nest high in a branch of the Saturn peach. These birds will know nothing of the perils facing the earth. This contrast between the news and what is happening in my backyard does make me feel like this world is Bonkers.

Today, a friend came by and we spent several hours removing peaches from the Saturn peach tree. Last week it was pruned to about half its size, and now we needed to thin the heavy fruit set. Packed together on the branches like sardines in a tin, the tree had produced a crazy number of apples. When this much fruit grows tightly together, disease spreads, the fruit is small, and it taxes the health of a tree. I heard myself say to her the ‘B’ word, ‘The tree is Bonkers – it has way too much fruit.’

Suffering is all around us, but miraculous beauty is too. Maybe the gift of the word Bonkers is that it describes craziness without being judgmental. We can do so much more to relieve suffering in the world if we don’t wallow in judging thoughts, but take up our lives wholeheartedly. Whether we grow miraculous peaches, listen to another’s pain, or spearhead an activist role to clean up the planet, every day we have the opportunity to hold back our anger, yet take in the grief; to feel the devastation, yet fight for change. Maybe to declare that this world is Bonkers is to bring lightness to the seriousness of our situation, and to let laughter wash over our tears.

Meditator with Acorn, 2017, bronze, Sculpture LH