The Secret Door

There was forest. For as far as the eye could see there were trees, great trees, that stretched up higher than any building you'd ever seen. And the air was close around us and very humid. If I had been alone I'd have insisted that it was a dream but of course I wasn't alone, Mildred was there with me and she saw it too - the great fronds hanging low above us and the dense vegetation that seemed to shut us in. At first we did not notice the condition of the ground upon which we tread. We were completely overwhelmed. Like I said we were at Heathrow one moment and in this strange other-world the next. The ground gave way beneath our feet as if we'd stood upon a mattress, and there was an odor, a fecund and earthy reek, the way it smells sometimes in the potting shack where Mildred stores her bulbs. You see there was a certain door and it was marked Secret. We thought it was the frequent travelers' lounge. We're not frequent travelers as you can tell, but I'd heard of such places and thought we'd have a look. We meant no harm in it. It was really quite innocent. The secret door led into a dark corridor that seemed to descend to a level lower than the tarmac itself and soon we were in total darkness and we turned back around, or thought we did, only to emerge there, in that place, where nothing made sense. We looked at each other for a long while before someone spoke and it was Mildred who managed to get the first word out and all she could say was John. John. John. In a sort of helpless, childlike manner as if she had just smashed her mother's favorite vase. What could I tell her? I didn't know anything. My feet were sinking in the ground and I felt very vulnerable, very afraid, and I don't mind saying it. This was not a right forest, if a forest it was, and forget about the fact, the, the inarguable fact that we were at Heathrow only moments before. I am sure of it. I could lay out that morning in exhaustive detail. I remember it, dammit. I remember it. It doesn't matter now. Because we were lost. We were lost and the situation was very dangerous because I soon gathered that we were, relative to everything around us, very, very small. Like in the novel by Jonathan Swift. We had stepped into a different place, a different time. I don't know how. I don't know how it is possible but I know it as fact. I am a man of facts. I know what I see and I know what I know. I was there. There was a large forest and we were small in it. Ask Mildred, ask her. She'll tell you. I am sure of it all as I am of speaking to you right now.

o O o

The Ides of March are Come

A March fly clings to a cliff face at Sculptured Beach, Point Reyes. Swarms of them covered the stone wall that morning; in pursuit of warmth perhaps. The air was chill and the wind up. But this did not deter the March flies. They had urgent business to attend to. Spring is mating season and the newly pupated adults seemed anxious to get on with it. This young male, with his bulbous, hairy eyes, is a terrifying and beautiful life-form straight out of science-fiction. But he is not fiction. He is all science. Every component of his anatomy is an evolutionary marvel. And to think that a few hours before this photo was taken he was a soft-bodied, headless, legless worm is nothing short of astonishing. Flies undergo complete metamorphosis. Each stage of its life cycle is marked by a distinctly unique physical appearance from the last. Here, in it's final form, it is ready to perform its raison d'etre - passing on its genes to a new generation of flies. Entomologists call these types of insects holometabolous, where holo = total. Photographed here at 1:1, this fly was about an inch in length. So named for their appearance in Spring, the March Fly doesn't necessarily emerge in that month. It can make its appearance at any time after the thaw. Here, in Northern Marin County, on this fine May morning, the March Flies emerged to little fanfare. They came to this lonely stretch of beach unobserved by all but one. They live and die by the tens of thousands nearly uncelebrated and unloved. Nearly. This March Fly is celebrated. It is immortalized in cyberspace. And it is loved. Like a sunset or an oak tree it is a master work of singular beauty.  One great glass eye captures two greater still, though not of glass, composed of thousands  smaller. It is by processing many images that the fly perceives what it sees. 

o O o