CHAPTER 13 - Civilization

Family fun

The early morning mist rose slowly from Arnold’s pond, and all the plants along the banks were covered with tiny drops of dew. Arnold was deeply satisfied to be back in his original surroundings while he shared the joys of parenting with Angela. However, combined with the pleasure of teaching their own progeny was the frustration of not being able to go back in the water to show them things firsthand. They were always one step removed, struggling to communicate across the boundary between air and water.

As the Wisconsin nights became cooler, Angela reminded him that the nymphs would need time to swim downstream for the symposium before the autumn equinox. They reviewed what they had taught the young nymphs so far. They had covered health and nutrition in great detail, explaining their philosophical preference for a herbivorous diet as well as their capacity to eat omnivorously. Then they delved into survival skills and techniques for emerging and flying. They remembered how naive they had been during discussions on flight at the spring symposium. By now, at least, they were experienced fliers and accomplished teachers. In their turn the nymphs were excellent students, absorbing their lessons with enthusiasm and always eager to learn more.

They decided to turn their last day of teaching into a day of fun and games. First they played at guessing the object in Arnold's mind, and then they tried counting and simple games with numbers. Most of all they enjoyed Arnold's stories though, especially when he told exciting ones about those big strange creatures called humans.

At last Amy reminded them: "How about taking us flying? You promised to do that!"

Angela and Arnold had rehearsed for this question, just in case they remembered. "Sure," Angela said invitingly, "just climb onto my back and I'll take you across the pond and back."

"Do you really mean it?" Amy squeaked in an incredulous voice.

"I'm waiting right here for you. Just crawl out of the water and hold onto my back between my wings. If you're too heavy, I'll let you know, and you can slide off into the water. I'll stay down low so you won't be in any danger.

Reassured, Amy couldn't resist the invitation. She climbed onto Angela's back, and had the thrill of her life skimming over the water, squeaking hysterically the entire time. Angela was surprised at how easy it was, but she stuck to the routine that she had planned before with Arnold.

"I'm next!" shouted Nell as soon as they returned. She was so impatient, she almost pushed Amy off of Angela's back. Like Amy, she was giddy with delight during the whole ride.

But this time Angela felt stiffness in her flight muscles when she returned. She was glad to see Arthur getting onto his father's back for his ride. Arnold strayed from the flight plan a little, taking Arthur up to 4 or 5 feet above the opposite bank, and returned around the pond, instead of over it.

When they returned Arthur was rather quiet. "Are you alright son? Did I fly too high?"

"Oh no, Dad. It was so beautiful, it took my breath away."

Arnold was relieved and pleased. So Arthur was becoming a poet! "And how about you, Neil? Are you ready to go flying?"

"Yes sir!" he replied. "I'd be ever so grateful for a ride. "

Arnold's flight path was similar to the previous one with Arthur, but this time he passed low between two alders at the pond's edge. Suddenly he saw a spider's web straight ahead, and with Neil's extra weight he knew he couldn't avoid it.

"Hang on!" Arnold shouted. He folded his wings back just as they hit the web. Neil obediantly sank his claws deeper into Arnold's chitin. Their four antennae doubled back on themselves as the combined momentum of their bodies tore at the strands of the web.

It gave way! They burst through it, and Arnold continued to fly again, but with less speed and altitude than before, barely making it back to the take-off site.

"What's wrong? Are you alright?" Angela asked in a worried tone. She knew that something was amiss from the way Arnold was flying, but she couldn't see the web from across the pond.

"No problem. Just a spider's web in our flight path," Arnold grunted as Neil dislodged himself from his tight hold on Arnold's back. "It could have been a lot worse, though. We’re lucky. Are you alright, Neil?"

"Yessir. Just a little scared."

"And what lesson did you learn today?"

"Not to fly through spider webs!"

"Right. Not a lesson you'll need to practice right away, but don't forget it once you start flying. "

Second symposium

When the autumn equinox arrived two weeks later, all the stoneflies along the Kickapoo River met at what had come to be known as Tanya's site. This is where Tanya had first demonstrated the skimming technique at the spring symposium, and where all the summer teaching had taken place. They had associated this location with her memory for so long that eventually her name became indelibly linked to it.

The attendance was even better than last spring. Instead of many nymphs and only one adult, there were all the adults who had emerged that summer and most of their surviving nymphal progeny. The adults gathered on a mossy stone next to very shallow water so the nymphs could stand with their legs and gills immersed but their heads in the air. In this manner all of them could hear Arnold as he began the proceedings.

"Here it is, virtually a whole season after many of us emerged into adulthood! It's wonderful to be alive to share ideas with you again. We are living in a new era of regular communication between adults and nymphs, as well as between species within the stonefly community. While we don't know if we're living for a longer time as adults, surely the quality of our lives is immeasurably better, since we're able to play and exchange ideas across the generations."

"This ability to reach across the air-water barrier didn't require a technological break-through, just the desire to make the effort. So far, we've been able to pass all of our accumulated wisdom along to the next generation with the spoken word. But one night during the past summer most of the adult stoneflies along this stretch of the Kickapoo River were trapped inside a hollow log after a violent storm. If we hadn't escaped, the teaching program here could have been seriously affected. The next morning Peter Perlesta and I spoke about the possibility of developing a bank into which we could deposit our cumulative knowledge. Peter tells me he has been working on this project during his spare time this summer, and here he is to tell us all about it. "

Peter stepped forward on the mossy stone and raised his head to all the assembly. "It's very simple, really. Allya hafta do is make some bubbles! "

Peter loved to talk in short sound bites. It certainly aroused everyone's curiosity, but Arnold realized he would have to nudge Peter along to make his words more understandable. "Bubbles? What about your earlier idea of making marks with your antennae dipped in pollen-containing saliva? "

"Yeah, I tried that, but it was too cumbersome. One day I ran out of pollen, so I started foolin' 'round with air in my saliva. Before I knew it, I was makin' bubbles just like this!"

Peter stretched his head forward and promptly made a bubble about the size of one of his compound eyes, and placed it gently on the moss in front of him. Then he made two more, placing each one behind the previous one.

Everyone looked at Peter's accomplishment in amazement. "That's fantastic!" Angela exclaimed. "We can't blow air out of our mouths, so how do you do that?"

Peter beamed with pride. "It does take some practice, ma'am. Gotta take a big wad of your stickiest saliva in your back mouth parts and move it forward to your front mouth parts. Then compress your mouth to put a little air inside as your back mouth parts come together to trap it there. "

Conversation stopped as several adults began to try doing it as well. They were not immediately successful, for as Peter had said, it clearly required practice. Arnold, however, just stared and thought about Peter's bubbles. "How long will they last, Peter? "

"All night long, but only for a little while in the sun," he replied.

"What if you made much smaller ones? Would they last longer?"

"I never tried it. I always made the biggest ones I could."

"Well, make some little ones right now!" Arnold commanded, forgetting himself in his excitement.

"Yessir, Professor!" Peter snapped, pretending to be serious. He was pleased to have caused such a stir, and he promptly made three more bubbles, about a tenth the size of the first three, and placed them on the moss nearby. One of the large bubbles burst as he did so.

"I'll bet those little ones will last much longer, Peter. Have you started to develop any symbols with them yet? "

"Not yet. Kinda waitin' for all of us here to come up with group input."

"Well, I really like your smaller bubbles." Arnold turned to address the other adults as well. "They're fairly easy to make, don't you think?"

Pam and Nancy were not having any difficulty at all, proudly displaying their creations. "I wonder why we didn't think of this before?" Nancy exclaimed. "No, not that way, Nick! Here, let me show you."

"Some of us have more language skills than others," Peter observed.

"Bubble skills, you mean," Nick corrected, still trying to get the hang of it.

"Bubbles are just the beginning," Arnold stated calmly. "Let's start to develop the language now."

As the day progressed, they explored many options regarding the complexity of the new system. Even though the smaller bubbles seemed to be quite stable, they decided to limit their dictionary of symbols to simple concepts, like 'Danger' or 'Wait here'. They would add more sophisticated ideas later. They didn't always agree on each idea, but eventually a consensus was reached.

Deep freeze

Soon after the symposium the weather turned cold. It was sunny and crisp during the daytime, but at night the temperature would drop below freezing. The adult stoneflies took to burying themselves as deeply as possible under the bark of trees or into the decayed cores of dead limbs. They noticed that they felt sluggish as the temperature dropped near the freezing point, and they would only come out of their hiding places for a few hours around noon on sunny days. Even their appetites were lessened, but they continued to nibble on mosses growing on the sunny sides of the largest trees.

Arnold and Angela knew that they wouldn't wake up again after the first really deep freeze. No one had told them about this. They just accepted that this had to happen. They were content to have lived long enough to have taught their own progeny.

"I wonder how Arthur and Amy are coming along," Arnold mused one sunny afternoon.

"Probably they're doing just what you and I were doing a year ago," Angela replied. "They were given a wonderful opportunity to learn and to pass along their new knowledge to future generations."

"I hope you're right," Arnold continued, "but I don't think they had the zeal that you and I had. "

"Pioneers often start their dreams with a burst of enthusiasm, and sooner or later those dreams will bear unimagined fruit. "

Arnold knew that she was trying to reassure him, but her words had a ring of truth about them as well. "You are a wonderful philosopher!" he observed, and he snuggled up beside her for a long, winter's sleep.

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