June 2024
Jeff McMahon
For the past month, spongy moth (nee “gypsy moth”) caterpillars have overtaken most of the trees on our three acres. The sound of insect excreting mimics gentle rain as they un-gently consume the leaves of fruit trees, maples, oaks, and even the pines, which we are told they don’t particularly like. The caterpillars are everywhere, climbing up the trunks, hanging off the (remaining) leaves, crawling up the sides of buildings, caterpilling across the road, even swimming in the lake. Our glorious wall of green is gnawed away and the forest parts to reveal its stark grey wood support structures, usually hidden until winter. Spring put on a brief costume party but now a brutal stripper has gotten down to basics. What is a tree in summer without leaves? As with so much of not-normal in this time of climate revolt, we assume total devastation, the catastrophic narrative we humans trend to.
Yet mid-June we see a resurgence, a re-awakening of green budding from the ends of bare branches. Spring is springing all over again on these first days of summer. Is this a sign of resilience? Have the trees overcome their attackers? Might this be a second front, re-budding beauty? The caterpillars themselves will soon cocoon to transform into moths, perhaps our trees are transitioning in their own fashion. Is there enough for everyone, bugs included? Is such adaptation a more achievable goal in our responses to overwhelming climate change? How much of our natural world is thus resilient? Will the coral reefs recover? We know of ancient redwoods communicating through their roots, figuring when to fight and when to fold. Jack Pinetree cones release their seeds when exposed to the extreme heat of fire, the better to seed the future. How to ingratiate ourselves, intruders as well, into this conversation? It was, after all, a human, Etienne Leopold, who brought the caterpillars to Massachusetts from France in 1869 to breed with silkworms. As is so often the case, the desire to increase production leads to counterbalancing destruction. At the very least, we can take some cautious hope from this development; perhaps not all will be total devastation, as annual summer heat increases from simmer to sizzle. Nature re-ups its game and so must we.
Perhaps the trees present an aesthetic of self-preservation, their resurgent response prompted by revolted disgust. These caterpillars consume and excrete, destroying beauty, feeding off another life form so as to transform themselves. Could the trees be rebelling against this derogation? Might they have something to teach us?
Walking through the plague of white moths (the caterpillars transformed), there amongst the fluttery in-your-face annoyances appear stunning orange/black monarch butterflies. What exactly is the difference between moth and butterfly? A moth is a moth is a butterfly? When might we see the beauty in these plain pale plebs as much as in the colorful monarchs? We no longer describe them using a derogatory name implying invader status, but still reduce them to a basic physical attribute. Is it this contrast which provides a particular strength to one’s beauty, and the other’s plainness?
Our two apple trees were the first to suffer. One, planted a mere three years ago, remains relatively small and thus rapidly stripped. The other, part of a pair thriving here when my husband bought the place in 1990, has seen its twin perish yet lives on, every year bringing another dead branch as it declines in sections. A large tree has more to sustain. On that old tree’s branches hangs the collar of our much loved first dog; the static apple tree more resilient than the bounding Benji. To lose that tree would feel like knocking over a headstone. We apply sticky tape to the base of the trees and pick off the caterpillars to drop into soapy water.
Having recently made it to age 67, the idea of resilience resounds, more appealing than the enthused yet defensive “not surviving, thriving!” of AARP newsletter images. “Resilience” joins me to the entire planet, though also to politicians and other grifters who rebound with the exuberance of over-inflated basketballs, and whose political resilience resembles pestilence. In this election year, one former President’s bounce-back from defeat (a defeat he claims as a victory) suggests a Rasputin-like resilience; a refusal to accept reality, a determination to control any and all events to one’s own perceived benefit. The current President’s remarkable resilience, more outward focused and inclusive, is subject to sneers. It seems an enormity of Americans prefer the predatory, the vampiric and voracious. Spongy moths; they are us.
From my retirement fund, I receive a newsletter examining “Resilience Amidst Uncertainty.” Aren’t 401-K plans what pushed the certainty of pension plans aside for the “freedom” of uncertain markets? As with nature, the economy is constantly in a state of re-balancing, knocked asunder by one plunderer or another. Similar to nature, the enormity we call “the economy” evades our control. We pretend otherwise, desperate and disparate weathermen predicting, correcting, gesturing at a greenscreen to avoid gazing outside at the trees, waving branches at us in alarm.
Summer advances in heat and humidity. One old man decides his race is run, passing his torch as resistance gives way to reality (and politics). His party resurges. The other side trumpets strength, a return to order, the sky is not falling the earth is not failing. The bitterness of his followers drips, no metamorphosis anticipated. Forests all over the earth are aflame in accelerating acts of erasure. Is resilience even possible? Will those Jack Pines be the only survivors? Must all future life emerge from a crucible? Trees fall in our forest with alarming frequency. We hear them crash onto the ground, assess whether they have hit any valuable structures, and return to sleep.
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