introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- byebyeblackfly the cool after sunset - 30 june 2014 "underneath the skin there's a human. buried deep within there's a human. and despite everything i'm still human...but I think I'm dying here."~daughter bangor, you were kind of hot today. like maybe even a little bit like city-hot. i was up at 7:30am, my room glowed with the early summer sun that promised an overly warm day ahead. there was no cool side of my pillow. i have an air conditioner and if i were in pittsburgh, i would've installed it by now, no doubt. the nights still get pretty cool here....but this is finally a night that i would've enjoyed a bike ride home...the cool evening humidity and the smell of the air here would be a really nice way to end the day. still, the temperature is dropping pretty quickly. i have a bunch of old white box fans but i even hesitate to use them...there is a voice in my head reminding me that in a few months, it's going to get cold here. i feel like i want to remember what this kind of warmth feels like. a long time ago, when i was seriously considering just going to alaska to live for awhile, i used to imagine how big everything would be there. the moon would be bigger, the skies would be bigger, the bugs would be bigger. that was all part of the draw...and when i chose to move here this spring, i had similar expectations if not on such a huge scale. i've been pleasantly pleased with the largeness of sky here, the plentiful amount of stars in my backyard night sky, and the rapid rate of growth in vegetation here. the grasses in the woods have grown to be as tall as me in mere weeks and the wildflowers are the kind of big that never quite comes through in the pictures i stop to snap but i can't stop trying. you know what else is big, here, america? the fucking bugs. at first, this was sort of sweet to me. that first day i dug in the gardens in front of my kitchen window, i met bugs i'd never seen before. they seemed so fantastic, some of them metallic like copper and as big as my thumbs. "harmless," cal assures me. he tells me those were called bottle bugs but, much as with many of the animals that cal names, i suspect this is a local name for this weird flat beetle. that same afternoon, i got some of the first mosquito bites i've received in years. i scratched at them like a kid, partly delighting in the itchiness (i know. freak...) and part remembering growing up in syracuse and scratching my bug bites until i finally fell asleep on hot summer nights. there were some afternoons before i learned that you can't go into the woods on a day it has rained here unless you can wear deet...on those afternoons, i came home with a bunch of mosquito bites and hey, same old. lessons learned and i've pretty much avoided the wet-weather walks since.there is a new season upon us in bangor, though. when i heard about black flies, i imagined the black flies of the adirondacks...the ones that you could barely see that would gorge on your blood with such craft that you didn't even know they were there sometimes. they'd get into your hair (another reason i kept mine so short for so long, perhaps.) i remember scratching tiny hard bumps of bites for entire weeks of vacations. i remember being chased by my mother with cans of OFF! bug spray and avon skin-so-soft. those were the black flies i grew up with and i was prepared for those little flying beasties. but they never came. instead, these giant black flies--like horseflies only with some pretty translucent wings with stripes on them and a FACE--have emerged in the woods. yesterday, determined to get a long hike in, i walked deeper and deeper into the woods, waiting for the 2 mile announcement from my phone stashed in my woods-bag. the monster flies got worse and worse. when i was two miles into the woods, i decided it was time to catch the loop back because it was getting intolerable. at mile 2.5, i was so plagued with them (as was Sammy who patiently shook them off or brushed his face in the grass to get them off) that i couldn't swat at them fast enough. i'd brush a few away and their cohorts would bite me someplace else. i've never been panicked about bugs before. once you go into the woods, you're basically committing to coming back out again or giving up. generally, i'm pretty sure i'm going for the former but yesterday, i wasn't so sure. they were going for my eyes, behind my ears. it seemed that the more i swatted them away, the more of them there were...and i was starting to sweat from practically running back along the trail and shooing bugs which i swear only brought more of them. at one point, i stopped to try to compose myself because i was becoming a little panicked. there had to be twenty of them with more on the way. "what are you supposed to do?" i asked myself. there has to be something you can do to make them just stop. that thing, i know now, was probably to just keep running. a few bikers came by me a few times and i envied them because i know that if i were biking, those flies wouldn't have had a chance to keep up with me. i bridged from rustic trails to off-trails and back to the main trail back to the car with no relief....not even near the occasional moving brooks. i did start to wonder if there was any other fate for me that didn't end with me acquiescing to the sky-piranha. it didn't seem as though there could be when they started going for my eyeballs and ears. i wondered how many had gone before me, just giving up and letting the bastards have their fill, picked down to the bones and never to be seen again? it was not until i was at the parking lot again, sweaty and exhausted, that they seemed to thin and fall away. in those woods, there is a witch and that witch doesn't have flying monkeys. rather, she releases the black flies. that has to be it. it was not for a few hours that the welts started showing up. somehow, they didn't get my face this time but i have a few marble sized bites behind my ears, on the back of my neck, and on my arms. my right arm seems swollen from them and burns like sunburn. "there are no poisonous snakes or spiders in maine," cal has assured me a few times. i feel like i can enjoy the snakes i have seen and i'm not worried about a brown recluse in the night. i feel comfortable inspecting new bugs and plants that i find on my walks but this...this? these things need to die. what is their predator? what diseases are they carrying? i think i must just be a little allergic to them or the baby is making me sensitive to pretty much everything. i rubbed a paste of baking soda and apple cider vinegar on my arm where it was swelling and that helped a little. i still woke in the night scratching (and admittedly, still a little delighted at the sensation of it.) my hope is that this is all late-afternoon shenanigans and that if i just go earlier, i'll avoid the bloodbath. i'm worried that sam is going to start hating these walks...despite his bug stuff, he still seems to get his share of bites, too. so that's really my first complaint, bangor. i'm open to ideas on how to combat these things because i refuse to be kept out of the woods this summer...or ever. i waited a long time to be able to just walk in a forest every day and i'm not staying out because of some pterodactyls that want to nom my rich delicious blood. i can't have deet with the baby, guys...so my trusty can of deep woods OFF! has to stay where it is this summer. the hippy stuff the midwife had me pick up was pretty much of little use. ideas? xo, your badly bitten jones ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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