Dragons and Damsels

It’s at dusk when they’re mostly noticed; Dragonflies and Damselflies that is. I’ve watched as they hover about the sumac trees in the rosetinted sky of oncoming night. It’s like a fleet of mini helicopters from some airborne division of a netherworld, a fairies’ world tucked somewhere into the banks of Slab Creek.

Sometimes called mosquito hawks because their happy place in the order of things is to zoom around and satisfy their main diet as they devour flocks of mosquitoes. Just on that accomplishment alone, I say that we adopt the Damselfly as the County’s national insect and give initiatives to anyone wanting to raise them. For starters, protecting our wetlands is paramount as these environments are the native homelands for the species. Spending their early lives as nymphs living in water, it takes two years before the insects have developed and taken to the air. It’s then that their shells are seen to refract the light adding to the magic and mysticism of iridescent green and blue figures inhabiting both realms of water and air.

I’m told that dragonflies are the ones with broad bodies and jewel-like colouring and have big bulgy eyes that can spot prey 40 feet away. With sharp spring legs and strong jaws, they eat when in flight and hold their wings out when resting. Damselflies on the other hand have slender and delicate bodies, land before eating and fold their wings over their backs when at rest.

The most adaptable of insects, they have two pairs of wings, but can still fly with a single pair. They clear their eyes and wash them with special combs on their legs that use water drops collected in the mouth. They are something to watch while in flight, imagining them as hummingbirds of the insect world. I can easily get distracted following their aerial acrobatics, as travelling the speed of light they twist and change directions, move up and down and on a dime, shift their incandescent bodies into reverse.

I watched a damsel the other day outside my writing room window sunning itself for an hour while perched on a purple New England Aster. That’s the thing, you see, asters are in season and dragons and damsels being coldblooded love the light and sun.

I’m intrigued to learn that the insects are ancient Beings. Sometimes called griffin flies, fossils have been found that show the insects’ distant cousins of 325 million years ago to have had wingspans of 30 inches in length. Being around that amount of time, the insects are recorded in classical prose and poetry as well as surfacing in folklore and mythology. Just so happens that Saint George’s horse became a flying insect when cursed by the devil and also of note is that in the Romanian language the word for dragonfly means Devil’s Horse or devil’s fly.

Caught for food in Indonesia, dragonflies are also used in traditional medicine in China and Japan. Over time, the insects have been adopted by various human cultures and are represented as imagery in pottery, rock paintings, statues and jewelry. Depending on where you live, dragonflies can be perceived as symbols of courage and happiness or souls of the dead or light and joy or on the other hand, having connotations of darkened worlds.

As for me I’ll herald the part about the fairies’ kingdom and spend more time down by the wetlands catching echoes through the fog of morning and in the glistening moonlight that tell of legends of devil’s horses and shimmering fleets of tiny dragons and damsels and other flying things that dwell in the marshes and hidden places, yes hidden places of an underworld that thrives down here. I’ll also be sure to tell any passersby that care to ask of the long lost legends of a fairies’ world tucked into the underbrush of Slab Creek Hollow.