This spoke to me.
I imagine it would
to my brother as well...
The Dragonfly Incident
by Bill Sherwonit
Apr 06, 2023
I suppose this could be considered a “wildlife encounter” story of sorts, though it presents some unusual twists. For one thing, the animal at the heart of this tale is a subarctic insect (and yet has nothing to do with the region’s legendary mosquitoes). For another, odd things happen that aren’t easily explained by either reason or chance. There are other curious turns, as well ...
The story begins with a man sitting on the front steps of a lakeside cabin, feeling contented and thankful to be part of such a beautiful, softly shimmering summer day. He’d brought a mug of coffee out to the porch, plus binoculars and a journal in which he planned to record some dreams. In between sips of his morning coffee, he noticed splashing on the otherwise calm lake surface, not far offshore. Actually it wasn’t so much a splashing as a trembling, those shudders creating tiny ripples that spread outward a short distance, until disappearing into the stillness of the water.
The source of the ripples barely moved, which suggested that a small creature of some kind was struggling. Picking up his nearby binoculars to take a closer look, the man saw a dragonfly, rapidly—and, it seemed, desperately—flapping its wings, or trying to.
The splashing stopped, then started again a few moments later. It went on like this for a couple of minutes, the tremble of wings on water gradually diminishing, as if the insect were losing its strength, its vitality, which of course it must have been.
The man wondered how the dragonfly ended up on the water. Had it somehow miscalculated while pursuing another insect, and crashed into the lake? That seemed unlikely, given dragonflies’ legendary flying abilities. But accidents happen, right?
Or maybe it had been chased by a bird and driven into the water. Or, its wings weakened and worn by age, perhaps the dragonfly had simply, finally, lost the power of flight.
In the midst of all those thoughts, another entered the man’s mind: why not try to rescue the dragonfly? For as long as he could recall, he’d been fascinated by dragonflies and their smaller, more delicate cousins, the damselflies. It might not be too great a stretch to say that occasionally he’d felt a sort of connection to them, the way some people feel linked to a particular animal, or plant, or landscape. He’d felt similar bonds to other wild creatures. The connection, if that’s what it was, had always been fleeting. But it seemed real, even if it wasn’t something he felt comfortable talking about, except with close, trusted friends. Even then, he sometimes felt a little silly and self-conscious, as if others would consider him odd for having such experiences. In truth he did sometimes feel odd. But also blessed.
Besides that, in recent years the man had stretched his sense of ethics and “right behavior” to include his relationship with insects. That was still a work in progress, though he’d even experimented with seeing how far he could go into summer without killing a mosquito.
But back to the dragonfly. The man went into the cabin and grabbed a broom, then walked down to the lakeshore. Alas, the dragonfly was too far out to reach, even with the broom. Oh well, the man sighed to himself. I tried.
Yet as he stood there watching the dragonfly, the insect beat its wings furiously for several seconds, then stopped, as if resting. Or exhausted. For a while after, the wings continued to shiver ever so slightly, sending out miniscule ripples. Then even they stopped.
More thoughts came to the man. Just how far am I willing to go, to save this dragonfly? How determined, how committed am I? The dragonfly appeared close enough to reach, if he waded out a ways. Okay, he decided. I can do that.
The man took off his hiking boots and socks and rolled up his pants, then gingerly stepped into the water, cold but not painfully so. (He wasn’t one to splash around in lakes or streams or oceans, even in warmer temperatures.) With the water nearly to his knees, he stretched his right arm and lifted the dragonfly out of the water on the broom’s bristled end. Smiling, he waded back to shore, the dragonfly weakly fluttering its wings.
Back on land, the man gently pried the dragonfly from the broom, careful not to harm the insect, whose dark, barbed legs kept a firm grip on the bristles.
His next decision: where to put the dragonfly? After considering various options, he chose to place it upon a picnic table, which offered a dry, spacious, sunlit surface. The dragonfly again fluttered its wings, as if trying to fly, but didn’t budge. It might be too waterlogged to survive its dunking, the man thought. But I’ve done what I can.
He returned to the porch steps, took a sip of coffee, and then picked up his journal. But instead of writing about his dream the night before, he jotted some notes about his interaction with the dragonfly.
Have I mentioned the man had a dog? Probably not, because the dog, though curious that his companion was behaving in such an unusual way, didn’t show much interest in the dragonfly. But the dog was another reason the man chose the tabletop, to keep the dragonfly away from her easy reach. Now settled back on the steps, he called the dog to him and they sat side by side a while, until some sound in the bushes pulled the dog away.
Now and then, the man would look up from his journal toward the picnic table. The first couple of times he did so, the dragonfly remained in place, still drying in the sun. But the third time he checked, the dragonfly had disappeared. This surprised him. He hadn’t really expected it to recover. Could it have somehow flopped off the table? Walking over, he thoroughly checked the ground but couldn’t find the insect. He supposed a bird could have swooped in and snatched the dragonfly off the table, but that seemed unlikely.
With no certain evidence, the man decided the dragonfly had mended enough to fly away. This possibility pleased him. Returning to the porch, he sensed himself grinning. Back on the steps, the man took another sip of coffee and then opened his journal, added a few more observations. When he got back to Anchorage, he’d dig out his Dragonflies of Alaska guide and try to determine which species he’d pulled from the lake.
Several minutes later, while looking up from his journal, he noticed a dragonfly land on the large, exposed root of a nearby birch tree, no more than eight feet from where he sat.
Here is where the story takes something of a surreal twist. While he watched, the dragonfly left the tree, circled a couple of times, and then zigzagged toward the man. And it landed softly on the back of his right hand.
Until that very moment, the man had never considered the possibility that such a thing might happen. Though startled, he didn’t flinch, but rather sat perfectly still, as if a spell had been cast upon him.
For a few moments (he later recalled), his brain seemed empty of thoughts, his entire being attentive to the strange yet marvelous creature that was grasping his hand. With something close to fondness, he took in the dragonfly’s bulbous head and enormous gleaming eyes; the fantastically intricate wings with their complex veining, those wings too glistening in the sunlight; and the blue-and-brown banded, tail-like abdomen. Yet more than any bodily detail he, what captivated him most was the dragonfly’s calm yet vibrant presence on his skin and a sense of shared awareness.
If the man had been caught in some sort of spell, the magic didn’t last long, soon replaced by curiosity and desire. The man wondered how the dragonfly would respond if he lifted it closer to his face. Would it stay on his hand? Or surprise him in some other way?
Well, it flew away. And didn’t return.
Only then did the man’s mind explode in a silent Wow! And once again his brain became busy with thoughts and questions. So many questions. For starters, what about the dragonfly’s struggle had aroused his desire to help it? What if he’d been unable to reach the dragonfly even after wading into the lake up to his knees; would he have given up or kept trying? And why did trying seem so important? And what in the world had prompted a dragonfly to land on him the very morning he’d rescued one? In some inexplicable way, could the insect that he’d saved been drawn back to him?
Behind all these questions were two others. Was he being ridiculous for taking this “dragonfly incident” (as he’d begun to think of it) too seriously? Or, conversely, was it possible that his preconceptions of dragonflies—and “lower” forms of life, generally—had blocked him from some deeper, more meaningful experience?
He just didn’t know what to make of this, this . . . what? Encounter? Meeting? Connection? But he was pretty darn certain that in all his 66 years, a dragonfly had never before landed on his hand—or any other part of his body, that he could recall—though he’d spent plenty of time in their company at swamps and lakes and other bodies of water.
Ah, you think too much, he muttered to himself, brow wrinkled and lips set tightly in a wry sort of smile. Seated on that sun-drenched porch, the journal still open on his lap, he gazed back toward the still water. Maybe that was part of the problem: he spent too much time rolling thoughts around his head, not enough time listening to his gut. Or simply experiencing the present moment without analyzing it. Simply being.
While his rational side argued that what happened was nothing more than a pretty amazing coincidence, some deeper, intuitive part of him wasn’t convinced of that. He sensed that he stood at a gateway into some different realm, a deeper way of connecting with wild nature, the more-than-human world that he loved so much. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt this way. Sometimes he wished he could be more open to the possibilities . . .
There you go again, he playfully chided himself. Too much musing.
If nothing else, he needed to learn more about the nature of dragonflies and what other, more mystical folks have to say about their symbolism, their significance.
Continued here:
https://www.dailygood.org/story/3069/the-dragonfly-incident-bill-sherwonit/