Wooly Bears

 I knew when I started this blog that not everyone would be a fan of every post. I have made my peace with that. Isn't that the way with any kind of creative endeavor? I used to have this argument with my Dad, who was a classical oboe player for his whole career. If I happened to be playing some of my music out loud and he came back to the house, he would exclaim, "What is this noise?". Of course, to me, the Pink Floyd or Talking Heads music coming out of the speakers sounded great, if not sublime. My arguments with him about the subjectivity of art never went anywhere. Heck, I'm just happy that anyone is reading my work in the first place. I welcome your feedback and I know that my style is just that - mine. And sometimes I go dark. I get into that mode where I can envision things going terribly, horribly wrong. And sometimes those are really fun pieces to write and I can't explain why. Anyway, I hope this latest feels a little lighter and gives you a sense that you won't be able to pigeonhole me as one particular type of writer. I'm having fun. I'm still experimenting. Still finding my voice. And you are along on this journey with me.  Thanks for sitting shotgun.

Wooly Bears

 

  Caterpillar stage 

  

 Isabella Tiger Moth

 

Like most Vermonters, I can become obsessed with the weather. I like to do things outdoors, so this only makes sense.It’s natural for us, given the fact that we have all four seasons in each of their distinct patterns. Some would proudly add our fifth season (mud). Many a war story has been told of braving a particular dirt road in late March or early April. How the ruts were so deep and it took no small amount of skill to maneuver through them. But that’s probably for another story. Starting towards the end of September, one of our best, and maybe most controversial, weather predictors start showing up.


I’ll be riding my bike down a quiet stretch of dirt road with someone and we’ll glance down and exclaim, “A wooly bear!” And sure enough, there it is. A small brown and black caterpillar making its way across the road. They are quite “wooly” and if you pick one up, you’ll quickly learn that and will observe it curl reflexively into a tight little ball. Wouldn’t you do the same if some giant scooped you up into its hands while you were just making your merry way along, minding your own business?


The scientific name for these little guys is Pyrrharctia Isabella and they are destined to become the Isabella Tiger moth. There is a lot of interesting information about wooly bears (or what some call wooly worms, which doesn’t sound nearly as cuddly) to be had on their Wikipedia page. In general, they have a pretty short life span, so we should be kind to these fellow Earth citizens when we come across them making their trek across our quiet back roads. They generally live for only 2-3 weeks in their larval stage (the fuzzy brown and black that we are used to). Once they have fed enough, they will pupate and eventually turn into moths that live a very short 24 hours, during which time they lay their eggs to start the cycle all over again. There is a version of this caterpillar found in the Arctic and they live in slow motion, extending out their life span for up to 14 years!


It’s interesting that we want to ascribe weather predicting capabilities to these little denizens of the U.S. and southern Canada. Sometimes, the caterpillar stage will winter over, completely freezing solid and staving off death by the use of essentially what is a natural antifreeze that can protect them to 90 degrees below zero (Farenheit). Then, in the Spring, when things warm up, they thaw out and go about their business, which is basically to reproduce themselves. So, they miss the entire winter that they are supposedly able to predict. They are in a blissful state (I hope it’s blissful) where they lie there in the grass and weeds frozen solid, unaware of all our scurrying around, plowing snow, getting stuck on icy, rutted roads, shivering by the fire and inventing new sports to keep us occupied until the sun gets a little closer and we can warm up again.


The lore is that the relative amount of brown and black on the caterpillar predicts the harshness of our winter. More black equals a harsher winter. There is even finer detail about whether the black is bigger at their front or the rear (harsher early winter if it is towards the front) and also that the caterpillars' 13 segments correspond to the typical 13 weeks of winter (more about all that can be found here). I’m conveniently ignoring the actual science around the wooly bear’s weather prediction capability.


There is another aspect of their weather prediction I hadn’t heard of before and that is if they are seen crawling south, then it is going to be a colder winter. I don’t know, maybe they think they’re going to make it to South Carolina or Florida, but that will be a long journey. I didn’t find any data on how fast they can crawl. My engineering brain wants to calculate that so I’ll have to throw a tape measure into my bicycle saddle bag for future research. My own observations are that they go faster when it is warmer. Their maximum velocity seems to be on those lucky fall days where we hit 70 degrees in October. It’s like a last gasp for these little guys. Maybe they want to just get to the last of the leaves and eat enough to pupate so they don’t have to do the whole freezing solid thing.


Some parts of the country have various wooly bear festivals and I think that’s great. Any excuse to get the community together, enjoy some food and drink (likely pumpkin spiced something or other) and to have some fun. If we do it over a wooly bear, I’m OK with that.


It’s funny that with all of today’s modern technology: satellites that track our weather, complex computer models that predict storms,and phone apps that can forecast when it is going to rain or snow down to the minute (my daughter’s phone will give her a message like, “light rain starting in 10 minutes”), I still can’t help but get excited to check out any wooly bear when it crosses my path and wonder what kind of winter he is predicting. Hey, was that last one heading south?

Scenic Views

Sometimes I hear or read a headline and it sparks my imagination. Do you know the show, "Black Mirror"? It is speculative fiction where some current technology or issue is taken just a step further than its current state.During the pandemic, there was a podcast called "The Chronicles of Now" that aired briefly. It consisted of fiction inspired by today’s headlines. I liked the idea and this story is in that same vein.



AP News - 9/26/23 - “Leaf-peeping social media users are clogging a Vermont back road. The town is closing it”


NY Times - Fall 2023 - “How Crowded Are America’s National Parks? See for Yourself.”

Americans are flocking to national parks in record numbers, in many cases leading to long lines and overcrowded facilities.


Scenic Views


It's just too scenic. You aren't allowed to see it. No one is. These places used to be accessible to everyone. But they couldn't handle it. They went overboard and ruined it. You can't even go to major cities or National parks these days without a reservation. They are suffering from their own popularity, almost literally loved to death.


I remember the first hints that this was where we were headed. We visited Yellowstone back in 1990. We were traveling around the country in a two wheel drive Toyota pickup with no air conditioning in the pre-GPS days. You had to know how to read a map back then. We made it all the way from Vermont to the west coast with just our old road atlas. The cover was torn and the pages were dog eared and rumpled. In the mornings, while sipping instant coffee made palatable with plenty of sugar and milk, I looked over the route for the day.


Our camp site was quiet and off the beaten path. Over the weeks of traveling, we had learned what type of places to avoid. If we pulled into a parking lot and it was full of RVs, we would turn around and look for something else. We learned that you could camp for free on any national forest land and that was our favorite place to go. Most people wanted more than what was found on these remote roads. They wanted lights and toilets and gift shops. We didn't need any of that. We wanted nature and quiet and solitude.


We also wanted to see Yellowstone and some of the other big sights, so we gritted our teeth and joined the masses. Over time, we formed our own opinions about RVers after following slow ones up miles of narrow highways, wishing they would pull over to let us pass. We would take a big breath and try to stay calm. Even when people were wandering off the boardwalks right next to the sign prohibiting them from doing so. We watched them walk onto fragile land sporting bermuda shorts and goggling through video cameras. Sunscreen congealed in a thick layer on the back of their necks and cigarettes dangled from their mouths. Inevitably, they flicked the butts onto the ground with oblivion and we would just stand there helplessly, rolling our eyes and giving each other a look. You might think that it was foreign visitors who maybe couldn’t read the sign, but it wasn’t. They had more sense and didn’t have that as an excuse. There was no excuse.


Anyway, that was decades ago and it was already getting bad at the more popular national parks. That was before the Yosemite riots and the incident at the Grand Canyon. I blame the internet. It ruined everything. People became obsessed with having the best picture for their Facebook or Instagram account. I wondered if they actually enjoyed being in these great natural areas. Or was it just about getting the perfect selfie with Half Dome looming in the background at just the right angle with just the right rays of setting sun reflecting off its serene face.


This is what I heard about Yosemite. After waiting for hours in lines of traffic to get in, tempers were already hot. A big crowd jostled near the fence, cell phones waving in the air. The inadequate number of national park staff stood by helplessly. There was some kind of scuffle near the fence put up to keep people from trampling the rare plants beyond. A punch was thrown and people started shoving each other. It moved like a wave through the packed crowd and quickly was out of control.


Like so many other things, a few people - well quite a few - ruined it for the rest of us. Now, after going through a rigorous background check, you wait months to receive your digital access code. The entrances to the national parks resemble the gates to a maximum security prison. Red and white striped barricades block the road and tall metal fences strung across the top with razor wire flank either side. Armed guards stand with grim faces waiting for potential trouble. A set of guards with digital scanners patiently check the passengers in every vehicle, running the scanner over proffered bar codes.


It’s not just parks but certain locations in cities too. My son wanted us to go to the “Cloud Gate” in Chicago. We had seen it in pictures of course. He was there for a new job and we had come to visit. We made our way downtown and were disappointed when we saw the line of fencing. It stretched on all sides of the giant silver bean-shaped sculpture. You barely could see it. There was one gated entry and the new National Parks and Significant Sights Security force was there to scan people in. I didn’t like the look of the heavy black automatic rifles slung across their fronts and knew that without a reservation, we weren’t getting in. We got back on our rented Ebikes, hit the throttles and headed for the waterfront path. That was remote and spread out enough that all it took was a quick ID check for us to access it.


It was only a matter of time before all of this came to Vermont. After hordes of leaf-peepers descended on the state year after year, something snapped. There were certain well known iconic spots to get pictures. You know the ones. The rolling valley with the perfect red barn situated just so and a patch of green field to provide contrast to the flaming leaves. You probably put together a puzzle that looked just like it. Again, another case of the dark side of the internet. The location data for these spots was shared and instead of the occasional car from Massachusetts or Connecticut rolling along a dirt road, there were now long lines of cars and giant F150s and the even bigger hundred thousand dollar sprinter vans outfitted to the teeth all crawling along to that one spot in search of the perfect picture.


I was in Pomfret the day the woman was killed. It was awful. The road was part of a bicycle loop a friend had been telling me about for years. The stars finally aligned and we could ride together. We checked the route on our tablets for any security restrictions and it appeared to be clear. It was one of those lucky fall days where temperatures were in the 70s under clear blue skies. The smell of the leaves was intoxicating and the fallen ones crunched under our wheels. We started to pass a line of parked cars on the narrow dirt road and first we figured it was a wedding or maybe people stopped for an apple orchard.


We came around a corner and there was a knot of people crowded near a section of stone wall lined with maples, all waving phones and cameras. We stopped our bikes to try and understand what we were seeing. There was one woman to the side who had a painter's easel and was capturing the scene of the barn and rolling hills to the east. The people didn’t look happy. Shouts and curses could be heard. There was jostling as those on the outside of the crowd tried to wedge their way towards the front.


We looked at each other and shook our heads, realizing that this was leaf peeping gone mad. We heard an engine revving to our right and an impossibly large truck was backing towards the woman and her canvas. I knew what was going to happen, but couldn’t react fast enough. My stomach clenched and I felt frozen, unable to move. She didn’t hear it and then it was too late. The easel splintered and paint and maybe blood spattered the tailgate of the truck. The crowd panicked and people scattered back to their cars. The noise and confusion broke me out of my trance and I had to look away. We called 911 and waited for the ambulance and police to show up.


Now there are certain roads in Vermont that you can’t travel in the fall unless you live there. It’s best to check the Scenic Access app before you venture out. You might be going along and see something up ahead. Then you get closer and it is a line of barricades painted orange and white. “Road Closed Except for Residents” reads the sign. A bored looking security guard stands to the side, head cocked listening to the ear piece with one hand on the heavy pistol hanging off his hip.