TravelingMel

I recently posted about ways to stop mosquito bites from itching, and primarily what doesn't work. Big H and I were talking the other day and he had recently read (heard?) that mosquitoes buzz around your head because it gets you agitated and brings your blood to the surface (sorry for the simplified retelling, Big H!). I told him I thought it was because mosquitoes find their prey by sensing carbon dioxide.

Big H went on to say he wouldn't want to do the research on that, which I think meant he didn't want to be the guy with the mosquitoes buzzing around his head. I have done the research, though, and wrote this little essay about mosquitoes and a (abbreviated) trip I took into the Wind River Range with my friend Jill and my ex-dog, Baty:

The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito.
--Austin O'Malley

Baty’s snout was swollen with mosquito bites. The little insects crawled over his nose, paws, and lower legs—the spots where his Malamute fur was a bit thin. I slapped a few away from him, and my dog’s blood smeared across my fingers. Bumps grew on the normally tight skin of the ridge above his nose. Baty was miserable and I felt guilty for bringing him somewhere that brought him such discomfort. I had included him on this ten day backpacking trip because he loves hiking, but I didn’t count on this. My first trip into the Wind River Range was supposed to be an introduction to the beauty and magnificence of this place, but it turned out to be a lesson in preparedness.

Baty and I had been up since five that second morning of our trip; that’s when the mosquitoes started attacking him again after a short night’s reprieve. When I awoke at sunrise, I peeked through the netting of my bivy sack and saw the insects swarming Baty, oblivious to the paw he kept running over his nose. I slipped out of my bag, pulled on long underwear, a fleece jacket and rain pants, then a parka, and finally my bug net over my head. The mosquitoes bit me four times in the thirty seconds I was getting dressed. My dog and I hiked away from camp so we wouldn’t wake up my friend, Jill, who slept on in her bivy sack. Plus, the insects weren’t so bad if I kept moving.

Five minutes later I shuffled up a tributary of New Fork Creek, with Baty close behind, and then trudged tiredly up the hill to a flat, granite rock. Climbing up the rock, I looked for a breeze. Sitting on the boulder, the slight wind was enough to keep the mosquitoes away temporarily. Neither of us had slept much the night before and we were weary. I watched Baty close his eyes, relieved for a moment’s peace.

The day before we had left Jackson early and drove two hours to the North Fork Trailhead. We followed the North Fork Trail about ten miles until we were just west of Lozier Lakes. Stopping to make camp, I noticed Baty swatting his nose with his paw and licking mosquitoes off his legs. Jill and I donned bug nets, but there was no relief for my poor dog. I couldn’t apply my powerful (and toxic) bug spray to Baty because he kept licking himself. I tried to shove him in my bivy sack, but he hates tight places and used all one hundred pounds to fight his way out.

It’s not as though we weren’t prepared for this trip. Jill and I had stopped in Pinedale to buy Deet—a chemical bug repellent that melts watches and sunglasses. It’s something I don’t normally use, but I made an exception after hearing stories of horrendous mosquito populations in the Wind Rivers. In addition to the bug repellent, she and I carried pepper spray in case of bear attacks, a tarp for summer rain protection, sunscreen and hats, extra warm clothing, and plenty of food. In other words, we were ready for ten days of whatever the Wind Rivers threw at us. Except for watching Baty battle the bugs.

When the wind ceased blowing across the rock, Baty quickly opened his eyes and groaned, once again covered with insects. I swatted them away and tried not to hate them. I knew they were just doing what they needed to do to survive, these females blanketing my dog. Male mosquitoes suck nectar and plant juices and are important pollinators for many wildflowers. Females also feed on plant juices, but they need the protein found in blood to form their eggs. Besides what they feed on, males can be identified by their plumose antennae, whereas the female’s antennae have only a few short hairs. But, I was working so hard to keep the insects off Baty I wouldn’t have taken the time to observe their differences even if both sexes were attacking him.

While I didn’t follow any insects around, I realized that after a particular mosquito bit Baty, she flew away, filled with blood, to lay her eggs in water. Looking down the hill, I realized we were in a somewhat marshy area. The snow had only recently melted, leaving the alpine tundra moist and spongy. Puddles of water dotted the meadow near the creek.

The mosquito eggs take about a week to develop, then they hatch and the larvae crawl out. The larvae have a distinct head, but no legs. They hang upside down at a 45-degree angle, or flat under the surface of the water and breathe through an abdominal tube.

When I returned to Jackson after the trip, I borrowed books about mosquitoes from the library. I was hoping a better understanding of the role mosquitoes play in the ecosystem would help me appreciate them more. I found out there are over 3,400 species of mosquitoes in the world, all in the family Culicidae. Their taxonomic order, Diptera, also includes houseflies and tsetse flies. Diptera is from Latin, meaning “two wings,” but unlike most insects, flies only have one pair of wings. The other pair is reduced to vestigial appendages called halteres, which are thought to function as stabilizers in flight. Sensory organs at the base of the halteres decipher air currents and pass the information to the brain allowing the insect control and maneuverability.

The suborder to which mosquitoes belong is Nematocera. Their Nematoceran relatives include midges, sand flies and black flies. At the family level, mosquitoes fall into the Culicidae, which can further be divided into the sub-families Anophelinae (many of these species are responsible for spreading malaria), Toxorhynchitinae (whose enormous larvae eat other mosquito’s larvae), and Culicinae (which contains about 2,000 of the known species). Mosquitoes used to be called gnats, a derivation of the Middle English words “gnash” and “gnaw,” which is appropriate. But, what we call gnats today are their non-bloodsucking relatives. The name “mosquito” came from a Spanish word meaning, “little fly.” But, while they are little, mosquitoes can cause big problems.

Whether gnat or Culicinae, the species that had my attention was the one buzzing around my head. The bug net kept mosquitoes from touching my skin, but the insects were still extremely close and particularly loud for something less than six millimeters long. I watched them walk along the netting, only a few centimeters from my face while the shrill hum drove me crazy. Baty’s ears twitched in annoyance as the vibrations of tiny wings pierced the early morning tranquility.

A mosquito’s wings are attached to the muscle-packed mid section of its body—the thorax. Automatically, these muscles contract and relax, beating the mosquito’s wings 250-600 times a second. This rapid wingbeat gives the mosquito speed and agility as well as the annoying hum. The tone of the buzz comes from the vibrating thorax muscles and a scale-like structure over the respiratory opening on the thorax. The wing tone varies from species to species and is crucial to mating because a female attracts a male with her distinctive wingbeat tone.

Once she has attracted a male, the mosquitoes mate and the female stores the sperm in her body. Each time she lays eggs, she uses the stored sperm to fertilize them, getting up to 4-5 batches. But, before she lays the eggs the female mosquito must search for blood. That’s where Baty and I came in. She bites her victim, sucks out blood and then flies somewhere to wait. After she has rested and used the protein in the blood to form offspring, the mosquito lays one hundred or more eggs, which hatch in a few days.

What hatches is the larval form of a mosquito, called a wrigler. Most wriglers feed on organic debris, but a few are predaceous—those in the sub-family Toxorhynchitinae. After four to ten days, the back of the larvae splits open and a pupa pops out. The pupa doesn’t eat, but breathes at the surface of the water for about three days. Then, its head splits and an adult mosquito emerges and floats on the shell of its former self until its wings dry and its skin hardens. Then it flies away.

The first day we hiked up the New Fork Trail, Jill, Baty and I had passed only a few people. Travelers in this part of the Bridger Wilderness Area seemed to be spread out and distant from one another. Still, the mosquitoes had found us camped between two boulders on a hillside meadow, using sensors on their legs and antennae to locate us. They can sense warmth (I was cold), moisture, odor, carbon dioxide, some sounds (but, we were very quiet), and possibly other stimuli. Despite our attempt to hide, a hot, panting dog obviously drew mosquitoes from miles around, even if Jill and I had not been there. In addition, we were all releasing a steady stream of carbon dioxide, drawing mosquitoes right to us. Until an hour after dark, we were infested. Baty licked mosquitoes off his nose for dessert.

Mosquitoes prefer some people more than others based on their body chemistry. I know this must be true because I have hiked with friends who come home with just a bite or two, while I am covered with welts. Mosquitoes must like Baty, too.

From our perch on the rock, Baty and I watched a porcupine lumber up the hillside, its spines undulating over its back as it slowly picked its way between rocks and gnarled whitebark pines. Baty growled low in his throat, which I felt more than heard. He was distracted momentarily from the mosquitoes. Visually we followed the porcupine for about ten minutes, until it moved beyond our line of sight. I begged the sky for more wind, but was denied.

I watched the creek bound down the U-shaped, glacier carved valley and then I scanned up a granite wall to the top of a ridge. The rising sun turned the ridge pink and rose and then orange. Some of the lichens on the rock mirrored the colors on the ridge; others were lime green, dusty sage, gray and almost black.

Jill and I had been hoping to camp in snow, where the mosquito populations would have been smaller. Before we left Jackson, a Forest Service Ranger told Jill there would be two feet of snow above 10,000 feet, but save for a few small patches in shady recesses on the hillsides, there was none.

Another mosquito landed on Baty’s swollen, black nose. The insect lifted her tube-like proboscis ready to plunge through his skin. The mosquito’s proboscis was made up of six stylets surrounded by a labial sheath (a lower lip formed by the fusion of the second maxillae). It was the stylets that did the actual piercing as she drove all six into Baty’s nose. The stylets, consisting of two tubes, two lancets and two serrated knives, penetrated his skin about half a millimeter. The mosquito used her stylets to infiltrate one of Baty’s capillaries or veins and then the stylets bent to the shape of the vein and she injected a bit of saliva through two of the small tubes to prevent the blood from clotting. She sucked the blood into her abdomen, and a minute later she had a complete meal. If she had only ruptured the vein, instead of infiltrating it directly, it may have taken up to three minutes to fill up on blood. The stretch receptors on her abdomen told her when to quit taking in the blood. When the mosquito stopped drinking, a little residue of the anti-coagulating saliva left an irritating bite. Finally, she was done and Baty put his head flat on the rock and ran two paws over his eyes and down his snout.

As the sun filled the valley, Baty and I walked back to camp where we found Jill crouched over the stove making instant oatmeal. I ate the cinnamon apple porridge and Jill and I discussed hiking back out that morning and calling an end to the hike. We were disappointed to have to cut the trip so short, especially after all the planning and carrying heavy packs, but I couldn’t handle another night helplessly watching my dog besieged and neither could Jill. Baty turned his tired eyes and puffy snout toward my oatmeal, and I let him lick the bowl.

We rambled down the switchbacked trail, listening to birds singing and chipmunks chirping as if they didn’t have a care in the world. I wondered how animals handle mosquitoes, how they keep from going crazy. A slight breeze and our forward movement kept the insects at bay as thick clouds gathered and dissipated overhead. As the morning warmed we stopped and Jill and I shed our fleece shirts.

After our second knee-deep crossing of the New Fork River, we took off our backpacks and basked in the sun on the cobbles deposited by the river. I took off Baty’s backpack too, and he laid on his side, cushioned by his thick fur, legs straight out, and fell asleep, free from the hum of his tormentors.

Imitating bears, becoming possessed by their spirit, and sometimes even becoming a bear are all part of Native American Bear Dances. Bear Dances were performed for many reasons: for the Yocuts it was a harvest rite, the Pueblo danced to celebrate the winter solstice, the Delaware renewed the world and the cycle of seasons through this dance, the Lakota used the Bear Dance to heal the sick and injured, and the Assiniboin danced it in preparation for winter.

Other tribes, such as the Northern and Southern Utes (and eventually all Shoshonean-speaking tribes of the Great Basin) danced the mammaqunikap, or the Forward-Backward Dance, to welcome and honor bears as they emerged from their dens in the spring. This was the most important ritual of the year for the Utes. Just before the winter breakup of camp, the Utes danced the mammaqunikap to help hungry bears find food as they came out of hibernation. The Utes imitated thunder with rasps and resonators to wake the bears from their slumber and prayed the bears would aid them in finding meat and berries. The mammaqunikap was believed to help bring an end to winter and usher in the beginning of spring. In most cases Bear Dances were ways to embrace and honor the sacred and acknowledge the mysterious.

As the end of winter and the beginning of spring come to southwest Montana, we too can prepare for the reawakening of the black bear. Bears are common in the Gallatin National Forest, and although they don’t truly hibernate, bears sleep deeply on and off throughout the winter. By spring they are starving. These bears, adapted to life along the forest edge where food is most diverse, immediately begin searching for succulence in the roots of plants such as spring beauty and wild onion. They peel back the bark layers and feed on the cambial layer of young trees. Black bears chomp grouse whortleberry, rodents, winter-killed carcasses, insects, grasses, and anything else they can find. What looks like insouciance is actually broad foraging to obtain a varied diet.

During the fall and early winter, bears enter a stage of hyperphagia—a pre-denning period of gorging—to prepare them for the winter sleep. A female may give birth during the winter in a semiconscious state. Although black bears mate in the spring, the egg won’t implant until winter, and only if the bear is healthy. By mid-January, two to four blind, toothless, and almost hairless cubs are born. They’ll sleep and suckle for two months until it’s time for mom to awake and begin searching for food again.

It makes sense that Native Americans almost universally consider bears to have great spiritual power and believe bears to be symbols of nature. These creatures appear and disappear with the seasons and, even more than other mammals, seem to belong in the forests and meadows, belong to the forests and meadows. What passes as indiscriminate eating is a widespread adaptation to their world. They are such a part and parcel of their environment that they fit in anywhere.

The Inland Tlingit believe Bear Mother gave birth to all the animals that walk the earth. It was she who gave the animals the form they have today. It was she who nursed each one and rocked them in a hammock extended between four mountains. When the animals were ready to find their own way, it was she who taught them what foods to eat and how to get along with each other.

In many cultures bears are considered parts of society and intricate in maintaining the functions of the world; thus they are honored and revered. When you run into a bear this spring or summer feasting on its favorite foods or teaching its young the ways of the woods, thank it for ushering in the spring and renewing the world and the cycle of seasons.

This essay originally appeared in Outside Bozeman.

I’m not hungry, but I eat rice cooked in tomato soup because I think I should. It’s the first thing I’ve eaten today save a donut from the gas station in Bozeman. I felt nauseous when I left my house this morning, I felt nauseous when I reached the North Fork trailhead, and I feel nauseous now, sitting by my tent above Summit Lake. My head aches and every time I walk uphill my heart races. Earlier I had to dig a hole to throw up in, and then cover the warm vomit to keep animals away.

After I eat the tomato-rice, I let the dog lick the bowl. It’s gross, but I don’t feel like dealing with the cleanup. Rigby finishes, and as I stand to put the pot in the stuff sack, I grow light-headed and dizzy. My vision blurs. I squat, feel better and stand again, this time feeling okay.

Without warning, a fat droplet of water lands on my head. Then another hits my leg. Anxious to beat the deluge, I throw all the food into the stuff sack, sprint back and forth looking for a tree to hang the food from, realize there isn’t one, and, grabbing the dog and the food, dive into the tent. Just as I’m zipping the rainfly closed, the sky opens up and sheets of water roll down my tent. Laying prone on my sleeping bag, I listen to the wind scrape a branch across the nylon and I pet Rigby when thunder cracks the sky and makes him jump. Flashing lightning brightens the interior of my shelter.

Laying in the tent, feeling poorly, I wonder what would happen to me if I died here. I had come to the Spanish Peaks to explore these mountains, not to expire here. No one knows exactly where I am or specifically when I’ll be back. It could be a week or more before anyone realized I was gone. I unzip the screen a little so the dog can nudge his way out if I succumb; I don’t want him trapped in a tent with a corpse. I hope he follows some hikers out to the trailhead and they call the number on his collar. I feel better convincing myself that he’ll be all right.

The rain stops after 20 minutes, I don’t die, and I decide to go for a little walk. I head down to the lake and up the ridge on the other side. To the east the mountains shine in pinks and magentas—alpenglow—from the setting sun. I take a seat to watch the lightshow and consider again what would happen if I died here—not morbidly, just curiously, though maybe a little melodramatically.

If I do die, I hope no one finds me. If they did, I’d be carried out of the Spanish Peaks and into a coffin. I’d be pumped full of chemicals and then buried and left to pollute the soil. I’d rather be like a wild animal or a plant, which dies and continues to be part of the place it lived in.

While hiking along a trail in northern California with my college boyfriend nine years ago, I caught a whiff of death. Decomposing ungulates, like deer and elk, have a particular odor that I’d learned to distinguish from other dead creatures and I recognized it right away. Bryce, smelling it too, pointed to tufts of gray-brown fur scattered along the trail and into the bushes. A slight depression followed the fur.

We parted sword ferns as we followed the coarse hair and scent 15 feet off the trail to the edge of a meadow. There lay a bull elk, its glassy brown eye dully reflecting a redwood towering above it. The skin on its stomach was torn open and its insides were writhing and undulating. We looked closer, holding our noses. Maggots had filled the elk’s entire stomach cavity, decomposing and growing. Flies landed, deposited eggs, and departed from the elk’s head. When they descended on me I shivered and swatted. I did not want these opportunists of death and decomposition on my skin.

Bryce said he had heard about a mountain lion in the area, and this definitely looked like a lion kill. The elk had been dragged down the trail and into the meadow for private dining. We wondered if the lion was still near, if it was watching us, salivating until it could return to its elk. The stench grew unbearable, so we turned back towards the trail, flies circling our heads.

Decomposition follows death. It is part of the cycle. Nutrients pass through living creatures, the soil, the air, and back again. Decomposers facilitate this movement and when I die, I want this to happen to me.

All around me there are decomposers ready to take over after death. I glance around the rock looking for bacteria, fungi, and insects, anything that will break me down if I die here. But I know decomposers are too small or too hidden in the soil for me to see.

Without fungi, millipedes, bacteria, worms, larvae, and nematodes, carcasses would litter the Spanish Peaks. Black bears under willows, spiders on top of aspen; the bodies would reach the sky. Carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous would be locked up in the carcasses, unable to cycle.

After watching the sun set on the mountains, I climb down the slope, the gneiss slippery after the rain, and walk around the lake. The air is still and crisp, feeling more like fall than spring. Several feet from the shore, grasses that grew green and verdant last summer are dry and brittle. Soon, they will break down and return their nutrients to the soil where something else can use them.

Strolling back to my campsite I hum a tune my dad used to sing, “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout. Up they jump and then they fall, while they’re eating your eyeball.” My dad, brother and I made up new verses, each more disgusting than the previous. I find myself hoping worms do crawl over me when I die. I even wish maggots would fill my stomach, though the thought makes me feel even sicker than I am right now. Instead, because it is an accepted norm in our society, I’ll be embalmed and buried in a pine box, or incinerated until there’s only a handful of me left. But, I hope someone takes the handful and scatters me on the forest floor so that I can be part of that great cycle.

Although I’m sick, my life doesn’t end here. The rain comes again, and I leap into the tent, dog in tow. This time it’s late enough to go to sleep, so we do. In the morning, I feel a little better and I hike down to Thompson Lake at the base of Gallatin Peak. It’s only a few miles, but I’m not fully recovered. Spending the afternoon basking on warm rock at the edge of the lake I think I’d be happy to die here. Maybe not now, and only if I knew Rigby would make it home safely; but someday.

Death is an opportunity to connect with the rest of nature, to literally become something new. Atoms of me could mingle with those from a mosquito or a columbine. Or maybe I’d be washed down Hell Roaring Creek into the Gallatin River, then the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, and if I was lucky, into the Gulf of Mexico.

By the third day of my trip I feel great and climb Gallatin Peak and hike back down the Bear Basin drainage through some of the prettiest sections I’d yet seen of the local mountains. It is mostly sunny, a little rainy: all in all, a perfect day. But I keep in mind that part of the reason I come to wild places is because they are still wild. I can’t call an ambulance if I fall off a rock or get inexplicably sick. This is part of the draw of backpacking—to lose myself in the outdoors and not know for sure the outcome. So far, I’ve always made it back to town, but if I don’t, I’m prepared to decompose here and melt into the earth.