Improbable Beauty
The Moths of Limberlost
It has been said we can never know our true nature if we don’t look into the mirrors provided by other people. I propose an extension of this idea - that we shall never truly know ourselves if we don’t look into the mirrors provided by nature. I suspect that each and every species living on this magnificent blue pearl of a planet, whether plant or animal, has something unique to teach us about the universe that lies outside ourselves and the even more mysterious universe that lies within. But we can't learn, if we don't take the time to cultivate the virtue of humility and the capacity to listen.
Gazing in a pool of salamander eggs when I was six, I learned a lesson in infinity. But it was the night moths that taught me the true nature of joy.
I am speaking of the family known as silkmoths. Inhabiting nearly every continent, they are the largest and showiest of all the world’s moths. A dazzling 1500 species cover the earth, most of them are tropical. But even in the temperate latitudes of North America, we have a hundred stunning world-class species. Regardless of where they live in the world, silkmoths are true associates of trees. Never do they dine on lowly grasses or forbs. Here in the Eastern Forest, silkmoths are sustained by the foliage of oak, ash, maple, hickory and walnut. They must apparently approve of their temperate fare, because they are every bit as large (some covering the palm of our hands) and gloriously marked as those species found in more exotic climes.
If trees are artists, than the silkmoths are surely their medium of choice. Hickories, tulip poplars, and maple trees cleverly transform masses of their green leaves through the gut of silkmoth caterpillars to produce velvety masterpieces worthy of any museum, adult silkmoths with fur as soft as a stuffed toy kitten, and colors as stunning as wildflowers.
Actually, flowers are particularly apt metaphors for silkmoths. For like flowers, which often come at the end of plants' lives, silkmoths are delicate and short-lived. Their wings don't even emerge until the tail-end of their existence. Most of their lives are spent as tubular caterpillars, slow-moving and flaccid-bodied, determinedly eating leaves high in the canopy. And then, after spending weeks in the sunlit treetops they descend to follow the path of the ancient initiates, choosing darkness and the deep sleep of transformation. It's a long dark fast. First, beneath a bed of fallen leaves, they spin a shroud of silk with their own body fluids, and then they prepare their own coffin – a restrictive exoskeleton, or chrysalis, within which they shall die and be reborn. Once imprisoned and nearly immobile, they quietly melt the juices of their body into a chaotic stew, only to reform them into the crowning glory of insect evolution - tree-flowers that abandon root and twig and take to the night breezes to sail aloft.
Silkmoths live only a few days, eschewing even the distraction of eating food, not even bothering to invest in functional mouthparts. Also like flowers, the silkmoths live for one purpose only - sex and procreation. Like floral petals, they are shockingly delicate and simultaneously sensual. One night in the air can ruin their papery gauzy gowns. But sometimes, one night is all they need.
(As I write this it is 10:00 pm, deep in the woodlands of the Highlands Nature Sanctuary. I look up to see a large yellow and pink imperial silkmoth, night eyes shining, fluttering crazily against my window. It was attracted by the single bulb of my solitary desk lamp. I turn off the lamp and continue my work by the light of my screen. The moth disappears into the night.)
Silkmoths emerge from their silk-woven shrouds like phoenixes from the fires of transformation. At first their wings are nothing but little flaps. Quickly they pull their furry bodies to a place of safety where they can turn from furworm to faerie. Using the forces of their considerably-strong heart muscles, they literally pump life fluids into their appendages. (Ponder... making wings out of their own physical resources, powered by their own applied will, fueled by the forces of their heart.) Time is of the essence, because in a short time their soft wings shall harden, whether successfully expanded or not. A window of opportunity opens, and then closes again, solidifying the stamp of their success or failure in the shape of frozen wings. Their wings are either perfect enough to go air-borne, or not.
...The mirror flashes in our eyes. Are we paying attention?
I remember the first time I fell in love with silkmoths. I was living in a farm country patchwork of soy beans and corn. The precious few trees that existed lined an occasional creek, and I was fortunate enough to live not too far from one of them, though the water was pea-green from fertilizer run-off. I had come across a lone silky cocoon in the winter along the river corridor, dangling from a dormant tulip tree. Not knowing exactly what species it was, I harvested the dried leafy bag, twig and all, and carried it to my garage, where I clamped the twig to my work-vice so the cocoon would stay air-borne. Then I, of course, forgot all about it.
Sometime that spring, I found myself pondering the nature of joy. I wasn’t sure at thirty-some, that I really knew what joy felt like. Fleeting happiness maybe, but joy? I wasn’t sure, and it was a disturbing thought that I might never know. One night soon thereafter, I returned home late in the evening after work, opened the garage door, expecting the cringe I always feel when surveying the artless collection of garage-stuff I've astonishingly accumulated. To my amazement, instead of man-made articles I saw TWO living promethea moths modeling their art-wings with unabashed vanity and grace, freely perched atop the vice. I had hatched a female, and a male had joined it, and there they were, merged in the most exquisite display of beauty I had ever seen. I determined later that the shock waves that went through my heart were none other than sensations of pure joy. Joy, I decided, at least for me, was the marriage of improbability and extreme beauty. Joy, I determined, had a facet that was decidedly shocking, requiring a strong heart just to survive the experience.
This current summer, deep in the Sanctuary’s forested embrace, I have been delighted with several species of silkmoths. First, five or six Luna moths visited, as pretty as lagoon-green moon goddesses. Then a few Tulip Tree moths. Later, lots of owlish Io moths and a goodly number of Rosy Maples, with a shocking pink that looks indecently synthetic. Two Imperial moths (counting the one tonight) and, the most beautiful of them all - one heart-wrenchingly perfect Polyphemus moth.
I have learned to listen for their sound after the sun sets. The little unidentified brown and cream moths that come by the thousands each night sometimes make soft clicks against the window. I ignore them. But when I hear a muffled thud, like a tennis ball wrapped in fur thrown repeatedly against the window, I am on my feet and out the door. And so is my cat, who thinks this great sport. Together we race to the outside window, and I do my best to be the first to catch the giant silkmoth. I want to get it photographed without the flaw of a cat’s claw, and then turn it lose again – farther away from the disturbance of desk lights and feline boredom.
Silkmoths have already declined rapidly in numbers and no one knows why. When I was a teen I read The Girl from Limberlost, the story of a young woman who saved money for college by collecting the chrysalis of silkmoths in the northern hardwood forests, hatched them out, and sold mounted specimens to people in the city. When the book was written in 1909 by Gene Stratton-Porter, such a life was not a fantasy. Today it would be. To see a bouquet of silkmoths in the 21st century requires not a night or two in a forest, but an entire summer. That is, IF you are lucky to have a forest big enough and undisturbed enough.
Maybe it’s the lights. Maybe it’s the cats. Maybe it’s the lack of old-growth forest. Maybe it’s the forest fragmentation. Maybe it’s the pollution. Or maybe its some viral gypsy-moth killer or corn earworm poison we’ve cooked up that went wild and is killing its silky cousins without selection, as well as the day-loving butterflies. Maybe it’s all of the above.
But one thing is for sure, there aren’t anywhere close to the numbers of silkmoths that there were two generations ago. Abundant silkmoths, like abundant carpets of spring wildflowers, perfect fall color days, clean-running springs, rivers with eels and hellbenders and mussel beds, are doomed to be things of our past. So isn't it important if we can't have it all, that we at least save whatever we can of whatever is left?
Let us hope that this current generation demonstrates the wisdom to save the trees, to save the dark nights, to save the flying flowers. Let us hope that when members of the next generation struggle to ponder the nature of joy, they will have something pristine in nature left to reflect joy back to them, with heart-throbbing beauty, when they least expect it.
And let us hope that when people of future generations walk the trials of their inner shadowlands,
that there will be something in nature to remind them of the power that lies hidden in their hearts,
and the wisdom to know when – on some dark night –
they should take the risk of growing wings.