These days, in June, in my garden, right outside my back door, a little miracle is happening. Every day. A small, two-centimeter-long underwater monster crawls up from the little, muddy waterhole.
When we moved in 4 years ago, I tried to clean the pond. It was so muddy, full of old leaves and branches. We removed the water, threw away all the leaves and earth that had been sedimenting on the bottom. Among the rotting leaves and algae and muddy, slimy debris, crawled some hundreds of very lively very fierce-looking insects. Even with a biologist’s help, we couldn’t work out what they were, and mistook them for another insect (“water calves”). We were sure they were greedy, dangerous predators (which, incidentally, they were). I was put off by them, did not want to get near them, and, lest they bite my fingers off, carefully avoided them, screamed if they touched me, and dumped them off along with the mud at the local garbage dump.
What a surprised chock when I finally realized that these monstrous, energetic creatures were actually nymphs (what an elegant name for these grey, creeping cannibals- even officially termed “ugly” in an old insect encyclopedia I found)! Recognizing it as the early stage of the beautiful dragonflies I saw flying around in my garden and elsewhere, it made me so sad to realize I had made them extinct in my garden. I had exiled them all away (in fact, killed them by letting them dry slowly in their own mud) in my eagerness for order and cleanliness.
I had earlier that year been fascinated with a shell hanging on my wall and realized that it was the remains of an escaped dragonfly – but did not see the link. I had read about them, was fascinated by their story, and was saddened by my fatal mistake.
Until the next summer, when I saw a pair of dragonflies hovering over our pond, now with new, fresh water and fresh rotting leaves. The two were mating, stuck together by end of their long back bodies. Then I saw the female repeatedly dipping the tip of her body into the water, assumingly letting go of thousands of new eggs. I was so grateful that they came back. Not so easily made extinct, after all, this species that has survived since the days of the dinosaurs!
So, after yet another two years, I could finally witness the amazing process during May and June, which I have been joyously preparing and waiting for every year since:
The total metamorphosis of the small, grey, underwater, misunderstood monster-looking, mud-loving water bug to a big and beautiful (in our eyes, who said it wasn’t beautiful before?), colourful, swift and flexible wing-flying helicopter master hunter of the air.
All year, I had been tending to the pond, making sure the algae didn’t grow too much, taking up all the oxygen. Filling in new water when it had not been raining for a while. Planting a water grass plant that naturally keeps the water free of algae. I had removed leaves from the pond, carefully turning every one to make sure that none of my nymphs were hiding underneath. In that state, they cannot live for long in air and scramble frantically to get back into water as I scoop the leaves up. Which makes them easy to spot and I can pick them up in my hand and gently put them back in the water, where they scurry hurriedly back down into the depth, under leaves and stones. I see them sitting lined up there along the edges on cold spring days. On warm days they retreat into the bottom, not to be seen anywhere.
Until that day.
That day when they, the biggest nymphs, have fed enough, when their bodies are full and they hear the calling. Or sense the impulse. Feel the longing for the heat and the light drawing them towards the sun.
In fact, how do they know that the time is ready?
It is during the first warm days of May, as the hours of sunlight increase and the heat of the sun is stronger, that the first nymphs suddenly decide that it is time to get up and out of the water. They crawl up, a few all the way over the tiles and up my white wall, where they fasten their bodies to the wall as they perform their amazing transformational ritual.
Or, now, this year, most crawl up on that little island of grass I planted in the pond, full of long grass straws, where I can witness daily wonders (if I have the patience). Some days, as many as seven nymphs crawl out of the water and up onto a grass straw, fasten their legs around the straws as clamps, and then, as the sun warms their bodies, a chemical process starts inside the insect’s shell. Little by little, their upper back bends out and a hairy head with big big eyes starts popping out.
Then, slowly, leaning out, above the head also appears a hairy body. With arms crossed as in prayer or bracing posture (technically, 6 legs), it creates a weight down – pulled towards the earth through gravitation. Warmed by the sun’s rays, slowly, but within an hour, a totally new, transformed creature with arms stuck to the long body, leans its way out into the world. With occasional squiggles, but otherwise in still and total surrender to gravitation and the inner metamorphosis taking place. Everything happens organically, as an instinctual and chemical process, without interference. If all goes well.
Within half an hour or so the dragonfly’s full body is out and it can let go of the old shell. It turns around so that it holds on to its old shell while the thin, delicate wings unfold. Shining with water and see-through color, the new being crawls further up on the straw to dry. Leaving the old shell behind, still clamped to the straw as a silent witness and proof of one of nature’s most fascinating magic tricks.
So am I, a silent, fascinated witness, as this sacred, natural process unfolds.
The newborn dragonfly, with pale, fragile, soft wings still kept together behind and along its long body, sits there on top of the straw for quite a while.
This reminds me of a desccription of neophytes, the participants of a rite of passage described by Turner. They are in a transitional, vulnerable liminal phase from one stage to another. – betwixt and between. Slowly extending and drying its wings until it is ready.
And then, it flies off into the world – and is gone.
As beautiful and fascinating as it is, it is a vulnerable process.
All do not make it.
This year I was witness to what happened when the conditions are not right.
The weather suddenly changed quite abruptly and the sun went behind heavy clouds. Cold weather and rains surprised the nymphs as they were in the middle of their tender process.
One did not get out of the shell, just the budding back showed that it was on its way, but never got further. One got out but unfinished, and the shell did not let go. It kept hanging on to the straw and when I, in my mistaken need to save a poor creature, picked it up, it crawled around with the shell stuck behind it, wings and back body unfinished. I sat it down on a flower where it disappeared, probably picked up by a bird for dinner.
Another came all the way out but the wings were flawed, crumbled. Even if they were extended, drying, they could not fly, and the dragonfly ended up face down in the pond. I “saved” it, but again, only to see it sit still with extended wings for hours, days, without moving, occasionally trying to fly, still alive, drying out, until it died. Another came out fully developed but was found with its head inside the mouth of a slug while waiting for the wings to dry.
I took one inside to avoid it becoming the prey of another animal – but they would have needed food for their young too.. Only to see it sit still to die and crawl to the window.
I realize that our human urge to save others, stepping into the human drama triangle as the rescuer, does not work in nature.I have to learn to sit still and watch as nature does its wonders of life – and death. My humanness trying to save them did not succeed.
And I wonder, do they suffer? Or is it only when I try to save them, that I make them suffer? Clearly, I make their suffering worse.
And I think, these mythical creatures teach us some very important things about metamorphosis and about natural transformation. About creating the right conditions for an organic process of their natural beauty and wings to unfold.
Thank you, beautiful Dragonfly.