August notebook

Here's a little object lesson in the compartmentalization of modern life. One afternoon we went out for a drive and as we headed to our car we looked back and saw our striped cat watching us from the window of our second-floor apartment, as she sometimes does. It took a moment before we realized that it wasn't our window at all, but the window of the adjacent apartment, whose occupants we haven't met, and that the striped cat wasn't our striped cat but an apparently identical one belonging to our neighbor or neighbors. Unlike the numerous dogs in the building, who see each other outside and hear each other barking from time to time, the two cats live parallel lives in cubicles a few feet apart, presumably in utter ignorance of each other's existence.

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Mysteriously, we've been followed by dragonflies ever since we moved in. When we drive out of the parking lot we often see one hovering over our windshield, as if checking us out, and sometimes we find what we can only assume is a different dragonfly greeting us when we get out of our car at our destination. They're said to be an omen of good luck — and a symbol of Japan, whatever that might entail for us. Today a meadowhawk (many dragonflies have wonderful, vivid names) approached me while I was out walking, settled on my hand, and stayed there for some time. It chose my camera hand, but I managed to slip the other in my left pocket for my cell phone and take a picture.

Abundance

As this anxious summer wears on I've been making regular visits to a little pond not far away, one that, in spite of its diminutive size, hosts an astonishing array of wildlife, all of it unconcerned with our troubles. In addition to hundreds if not thousands of frogs of various sizes, which dash into the water with cries of alarm as I circle the shore, there are snapping and painted turtles, at least one water snake, small fish, and several species of dragonfly. As I arrive great blue herons fly up, issuing unearthly raucous cries, and rabbits, deer, and wild turkey browse the adjacent meadows.

The rabbits have apparently become accustomed to human presence and continue nibbling until I'm almost on top of them, a complacency that may be ill-advised as there are foxes, coyotes, and other predators in the vicinity. The dragonflies don't seem to care much about me either; they dart about, carefully avoiding hungry mouths lurking below the surface of the pond, and rest here and there on rocks and vegetation, only flitting away when I come within an arm's length. The green one immediately below is (I'm told) a female eastern pondhawk, which is a wonderful and appropriate name, for this is very much a hunting creature.

The frogs must be the keystone species here, their sheer numbers guaranteeing their own perpetuation as well as the survival of those who prey upon them. Over the past weeks the young ones have been slowly metamorphosizing from tadpoles. Some are still confined to the water, while others now hop about, soon to lose the remnants of their tails. They're utterly absurd creatures, and as such instantly recognizable as our kin.

Flight

I was outside the other evening watching dragonflies in the back yard. There seemed to be about a half a dozen of them, though it was hard to tell since they all looked pretty much alike at the speed they were moving. They were big ones, real bruisers; they hung around for fifteen minutes or so until it got dark, darting around the yard in roughly circular patterns, stopping on a dime and starting again, rising and falling. All to no purpose I could detect, though since they didn't seem to be mating I suppose they were hunting gnats, of which there were a few in the air — their vision must be pretty sharp. There's no water nearby, which means they must have flown at least a couple of hundred yards to get here, and they almost appeared to be making a point of keeping close and not straying into the neighbors' yards. They seemed to have arrived together and when they disappeared they did so at the same time, though as far as I could tell they ignored each other while they were here. They paid me no attention at all. I kept expecting one to land and rest so I could get a better look, but none ever did.

A few nights after, at a later hour, I was walking home and saw a couple of bats hunting insects. They flew low enough, as they flitted across the sidewalk, that they could have collided with me or another pedestrian, but of course they didn't. Our paths and intentions never intersected; we crossed through the same coordinates in space, separated by a few seconds time and millions of years of divergent evolution, our senses sharpened in different ways, mutually indifferent and unreachable. We are a nuisance to them, sometimes, but also a benefit: these spend their daylight hours in the hidden spaces beneath the eaves of a church across the street. Likewise, they pose problems for us — they can carry disease — but cut down on the bugs as well.

It took our own species a couple of million years to master flight, and even then it was not with our bodies, but with our tools. We look on that as one of our greatest achievements, which from an engineering standpoint it certainly was. But considering what came next — the ability to destroy each other long-distance, en masse, the fact that now nobody, really, has anywhere to hide — it's hard to avoid the suspicion that there are some responsibilities we're just too young to understand.