The daily news about the state of our planet is overwhelming. Recent articles inform us that ocean fishing and mining practices are scraping all life off the seafloor as if none of it mattered. We know about vanishing sea ice in the Arctic and vanishing glaciers worldwide, and altered ocean currents that bode no cheer for future weather patterns. Closer to home, I’m nearly apoplectic over the proposed “Trump Freeway” along US-287, for all the reasons outlined in Claire Cella’s recent Mountain Journal article.
Yet, distractions from depressing news offer comfort, and I take advantage of them daily. Toward the end of an afternoon, I turn to the mini-forest in my backyard where I can close my eyes and listen to birdsong and breezes moving through the trees. I don’t know how I’d keep a semblance of sanity without access to something green and growing, whether at home or in the nearby national forest.
Early summer bursts with life: chickadee fledglings, mountain-ash seedlings from last year’s fruit, weeds in the vegetable garden that seem to grow a few inches every day. They imbue such abundance, such insistence on survival, whatever we humans throw in the way. And it buoys my spirit.
In her poem “Sometimes,” Mary Oliver writes:
Pay attention.
Be astounded.
Tell about it.
What an excellent recipe for navigating anxiety in a world where beauty and horrors entwine. Taking Mary Oliver’s advice, I practice paying close attention to whatever spontaneously draws me. I allow myself to be astounded by the ordinary, for nothing is ordinary if I give it my full attention.
Some of the things that astound me, even if common annual events, include what I’m watching out my window as I write this. The mountain chickadee pair that has nested in a spruce tree is now vigorously calling for their young to fledge. The parents are willing to spend hours at this — even more than one day — gathering aphids from trees but only bringing a few to the nest. Eventually they hold off feeding until the young get hungry enough to emerge from their safe little cavity. Once the boldest chick takes off, the others soon follow. Then they all disappear for a week or more, in case any predators have been attracted to the nest site by all the chirping and cheeping. I will see them again later this summer when the young are feeding themselves.
Yesterday afternoon, under a gentle gust of wind, a pinhead-sized aphid nymph fell onto my hand as I sat on the back deck. I watched it traverse the forest of hairs on my finger, hairs so fine and sparse I couldn’t see them myself, but I felt each one react to the aphid’s invisible feet. I dropped into a world where, for a few minutes, I could be astounded by the miracle of such a tiny life, which reminded me of how tiny I am compared to the globe, and the universe. Eventually I coaxed the insect onto an aspen leaf so it wouldn’t get squashed by my clumsy human hand.
The aphid was just one among many small and easily overlooked wonders that astound me. For example, in places where limestone decomposes into calcium-rich soil we find inch-wide snail shells scattered on the ground. I’ve been asked if they are fossils. Not at all; the shells are from a living land snail of the genus Oreohelix. Unless I’m hiking in super-wet conditions, I rarely see them above ground, for needing to stay moist, they burrow into leaf litter or soil and emerge mostly at night.
When I happen to see one on the move, I crouch low to watch. How must it perceive the world, with its eyes at the ends of long upper tentacles and scent detection in the shorter ones near the ground? Snails don’t have ears, so external vibrations aren’t heard as sounds, but rather are felt. The snail’s substitute for what humans hear as tones must resemble the way Beethoven perceived the music he composed after he went deaf. I wonder if a snail might be soothed by “Ode to Joy.”
Observation feeds my sense of wonder, and so does a bit of research. I find that Oreohelix is unique among Rocky Mountain land snails. Instead of laying a mass of eggs, this genus keeps its young inside as they begin to grow. When they emerge, they are miniature snails, complete with shells, and ready to head out into the world. Is that not astounding?
I’ve never found a snail shell in town, but my yard is home to plenty of earwigs. They tend to elicit an eeeww response with their quick movements and formidable looking pincers, but curiosity can overcome what feels like an innate revulsion to creatures that creep and crawl.
Curious, I tried to find some information about them online, but came up with mostly ads for products to get rid of them. With a bit more searching, I found tidbits that made me look at earwigs differently. Like the snails that keep their young aboard until they can survive on their own, female earwigs care fastidiously for their eggs, cleaning them to prevent harmful fungi from invading. The female earwig then looks after the young until their second molt. Then, like young snails, they are sent off to school.
One more tidbit about earwigs: they are even helpful after they die. According to something I read long ago in a natural history book, the hard, boat-shaped remains of earwig abdomens can pile up in forest soil and serve as tiny reservoirs for water. Multiplied by many, this helps keep moisture in the soil. Perhaps Oreohelix is among those who benefit from earwigs.
Snails and aphids and earwigs are all part of the food chain. The decayed leaf matter and detritus on the ground that snails and earwigs eat and eliminate become nutrients available to other organisms. Aphids produce “honeydew” that sticks to leaves, and is fed on by ants, wasps and other insects. Earwigs eat aphids and provide a meal for birds, beetles and hornets.
If this is more than anyone wants to know about creepy-crawlies, I apologize, but I find a glimpse into their way of life surprising and refreshing, even though the kind of earwigs we have in the Mountain West are said to be from Europe. Like centipedes and other scary looking bugs, they fit into the world, feeding and being fed on, recycling nutrients as they go. And since these kinds of insects are usually found close to home, you don’t have go on an expedition to watch them.
Learning about non-charismatic microfauna like snails, aphids and earwigs does more than distract me from the fretful news that threatens to overwhelm. It helps me to look beyond the humanosphere and appreciate the astounding diversity of life on Earth. It helps me to have hope for the continuation of this life in its many forms, and the promise of resurrection after fires, floods or meteors slamming into the earth. After each of several great extinction events in the geologic past, life has rebounded with greater diversity than before. And it is the meek, and largely unobserved, creatures that inherit the earth.
