Editor’s note: Walt Amses is a writer and former educator who lives in Calais.
[T]he black flies seem gone. I almost chortle to myself before the first deer fly hits my forehead with such velocity I flinch, as if dinged by a pellet gun. A mile down the road I’m convinced they’ve mistaken me for a donkey or some other, not particularly astute, barnyard creature as they try to get behind my sunglasses and chew on the soft skin around my eyes, which I assume is either delicious or very nourishing for a voracious insect.
I’ve stowed my hiking poles, perhaps for the duration of this pestilence, replacing them with a small, three-pronged branch about two feet long with a couple of leaves still attached for maximum swatting coverage. Like flagellants throughout history, I walk, alternately stepping and flogging, as though on a pilgrimage to a bucolic retreat in the Green Mountain foothills where masochists engage in predatory insect worship. As biblical as all this seems, I’m unfazed, more focused on secular escape than metaphysical contemplation. But I digress.
We all know Vermont is uniquely fortunate to have more than the four traditional seasons. We get to include deer and mud as well as “stick,” which actually occurs twice: once in November, after the last leaf peepers have fled toward friendlier climes and again in late March and early April, roughly between snow melting and trees budding. Stick may also encompass Mud, depending on your perspective, but it’s mostly based on where you live.
But there are times of the year that even this plentiful array doesn’t accurately depict our experience, so I’d like to add a “season” or two for your consideration, based on my own, 35 years’ worth of exposure to the natural world on our back road. I walk three or four miles just about every day, encountering a variety of deterrents, and, excluding winter, which deserves a chapter of its own, the insect world provides perhaps the most daunting.
Initially, in late spring, when winter is mostly gone — although it’s never really gone until Memorial Day — precisely when you want to get the yard in shape, plant some early vegetables or finally complete the autumn chores emerging from the melting snow, the first black flies appear.
Several decades ago on a warm, humid late May afternoon I was happily planting my first garden ever when what looked like a couple of gnats encircled my face. A very short time later I literally ran to the house seeking refuge from what had become an almost impenetrable cloud of bugs whose minute size belied their unbridled viciousness. So our first addition to the seasonal lexicon is appropriately “Black Fly” — the precursor of obscenity-laced cries of anguish; the patron saint of agoraphobia; and generally, an instrument of universal grief.
The walk today seems tangled in the transition between the demise of the black fly and the debut of the deer fly — our second new season — since there appears to be a smattering of both at this point. Mosquitos are in the mix as well: a mid afternoon trifecta of sorts with win, place and show all going to the parasitic vampires. My pace quickens as if I can somehow outrun the little winged leeches but all I manage to do is increase the aerobic intensity of what began as a casual meander. As I recall from years past, in the realm of outdoor activities, there’s no such thing as casual this time of year.
But it’s only hours until summer solstice and I have a specific destination in mind … I can feel a ripple of excitement as I approach the pond … I’ve decided swimming season is about to begin. As I ease myself into the water — which was ice a little over a month ago — my enthusiasm wanes a little more the deeper I get. As the glacial water engulfs certain extremities my comment to someone on the beach actually sounds like an adolescent Frankie Valli. Before I can determine whether or not that’s even possible, a deer fly digs in, unreachable between my shoulder blades, and I launch myself, escaping into the silken frigidity of the crystal clear water.
A couple of strokes and I’m free of insects. Hypothermia is my only worry. Summer has begun.
