I’m known by many names and live in plain sight–always near moving water and hard to miss. My waterborne family of origin is very diverse–we are big and small, black, dark brown, yellow, olive-green–even bright orange. I am Plecoptera.
Most know me in the West as a Yellow or Green Sallie, Golden Stone, Snow or Salmon fly. I am not handsome like many of my waterborne cousins who have sails for wings, nor graceful once airborne, yet to see me is to see something good–something unmistakably beautiful and good. Clean, cold, water is where I live and die. Warm, still, polluted waters are not for me.
I live much of my life on the river bottom, attached to rocks, breathing oxygen through purifying gills. I live two of my three life cycles in the comfort of the deep. When the time comes, I find my way to the surface, my life cycle nearly complete. I no longer resemble my old self. My body is now transformed, I will only live a few days. An urge never before felt takes over my every move. I want desperately to mate, to assure a future for my kind–wanting to make a difference before it’s too late for me.
We are an indicator species–to see us in great numbers, in search of a mate, struggling to fly, with not one but two pair of braided wings is to see us living our best life. To see a cloud of us is to see well-fed fish and fat birds.
After leaving our sperm inside a receptive mate we land with a splash, spent–back to where it all started with wings, now flat against our backs. Wings that cover our dying segmented bodies pressed against the moving water. Our mates will live just long enough to deposit our consummated kin.
Since birth, life has been full of challenges and near-death experiences yet here we drift, survivors, to die noticed only by the sharpest predator’s eyes. A firm grip with clawed feet keeps us briefly afloat and the hope that our offspring will know this precious brief life and the gift they are.
We die, our purpose for living now complete.
I drift
I drift solo on the current through the pages of fly-fishing magazines like an anxious adult stonefly anticipating death from above or below—my purpose nearly complete. Now decades old, I know that my time is short and that I am near the end of it. I scan the pages with compound eyes as I drift by–hoping against hope that I will see another’s image like mine and a story written by them or by another one of us about us. I drift knowing that I am not alone yet my kind are missing from the pages I scan. I am not alone yet there is little evidence, page after page.
My time is fleeting. I want to stop drifting if only for a moment to celebrate the life of another like me in flight or on land. I drift knowing that we have important stories to tell if only for each other–and we should be the ones telling them. I grow tired of seeing us only by accident or in ads looking outdoorsy, barely afloat in shallow water.
I continue to hope as I drift, page after page–wondering why, after so long, we are not in print? Don’t creators realize that we contribute much to the health and richness of this ecosystem?
Now solo in the current, drifting above the home I once knew, I scan the land, the brush and the sky in search of a home for us in the pages of our dreams. The thought enters the pores of my skin, like the air I now breathe absent of gills, that the home we seek just might be too toxic for us–the waters too muddy, too warm, too still. My kind needs a home that is life giving like the stillness of the deep.
I do not fear death however it comes–death is why I am here. What I fear, as others like me do, is living a life unnoticed, giving but not receiving, page after page, interlopers, a species without deep importance.
I will not take flight again; my time is passing–my purpose near complete. A firm grip with arched feet is what keeps me afloat and a hope that others will someday see among the pages what I do not.
Adrift, I remain hopeful and give thanks for the life I was given, for the purposes that made me stronger until death comes from above or below. Look for me in plain sight–always near clean moving water. Live strong, fellow stoneflies. Know that you are unmistakenly beautiful and good. Be careful in the home you seek.
Live your best life, adrift in the pages of your dreams.
Dr. Bartlett is a retired educator. He retired from Gonzaga University in 2007 and Eastern Washington University in 2020.