Labor Day Weekend Reflections on a Dragonfly
Was it dead? The dragonfly was upside down as it floated by me
I was giving a SUP lesson to a guest when I saw the dragonfly. We have an eddy on our side of the river and the beautiful creature was slowly being transported upstream. I had my student gently push it toward me so I could carefully lift it. Although it was motionless, I thought maybe since its mouth was above water it hadn't drowned, but who knows how long it had been stuck that way, its gold filigree wings serving as shackles binding it to the current?
As my paddleboard student worked up and down along the shoreline, getting a feel for the board while kneeling, I took the dragonfly to our pumphouse roof and gently turned it right side up, leaving it there after studying its body. It was magnificent. A truly breathtakingly stunning insect in full bloom. It was about 5" across, its body the color of celestial marvels, but the wings were what held my eye longest. I've studied them and drawn their distinctive curves and veins for our embroidered clothing, always captivated by the beauty and mystery. How can something that weighs no more than a whisper and appears so fragile jettison the dragonfly at such dizzying speeds?
The dragonfly's life span is brief. After crawling up from the river bottom, they break out of their fierce-looking carapace. It served them so well over winter in the murky world where they were one of the tiniest but toughest predators, but the next stage is airborne and the heavy exterior is left behind.
Free of their river armor and terribly vulnerable, they unfurl those tiny wings and if they're lucky, the moist body and wings dry so they can fly away before a predator snatches them. For a few glorious months, they conduct aerial ballets, feed and mate.
Dragonfly sex can be wickedly violent and if the large but inert dragonfly on our pumphouse was a female, it's possible a male had caused her fall into the water. Females lay their eggs on plants in the water, or directly onto the water. It's possible she blew the touch and go of laying an egg, although it could be a bit early for that. Since this one was upside down, I lean toward a mishap with a male, but who knows?
By late fall, the brief life of a dragonfly is over. The airborne river sprites are gone and the only dragonfly we might see is a dead one on the ground.
I was able to be a part of one dragonfly's very first day as we know them. Several years ago, our cat Alvin trotted into the cabin with a newly-hatched dragonfly in his mouth. I got it away from him and held it in the sun, watching the dewy creature move ever so slightly. Were there internal injuries? Would it be able to fly? I took the picture you see at the top of this newsletter and then placed the vulnerable little thing up high in a planter where birds wouldn't easily see it. After several minutes, it launched from the greenery and zoomed away, taking a tiny part of me up into the sky on its virgin flight. What joy!
After my SUP student was standing and paddling with ease, I left her to it and checked out the pumphouse dragonfly. Still no movement. But I've rescued a couple of dragonflies from the river on kayak trips and each time, I put them on my straw hat so they could dry off and fly away if they lived. They did, so maybe this one would as well. I placed a pot of petunias by it as cover and checked back a few times over the next hour. On my last visit, the ER was empty.
That was about three weeks ago. Recently, Steph and I watched twilight drift down as we sat on the patio. Dragonflies were everywhere; they skimmed the river, swirled in the air closer to eye level and as we gazed up, we saw what was for me the largest concentration of them ever. Not even in the fall as we run the river and are surrounded by huge masses of the dazzling golden-winged acrobats have I seen the sheer numbers as we did a week ago. They spun so high and in such an astounding, fluid mass that it looked fake. But it wasn't fake and it was wonderful.
There was a time when I might have waxed eloquent on the possibility this marvelous display was for my efforts on behalf of waterlogged dragonflies, but not now. They were living their lives completely free of the complications of human thought. They are wild and don't think about us. It is as it should be for them.
Just the briefest memory of that twilight spectacle is enough to give me an aerial view of the magical event. Maybe it's because I have flown paragliders off mountain tops and ridden the air's currents over wild country. Once, I shared the sky with two bald eagles doing the same thing, wafting back and forth on the thermals, below me
. So I have some experience that might help spirit my thoughts skyward.
But it's entirely possible that I rise solely on the strength of thousands of sparkling gossamer wings.
