Bark Beetles

In which bad things happen to good trees.

Eastern Ash Bark Beetle. Photo by TH Atkinson, Biodiversity Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Shadows

Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast
terrible shadows, that each of the so-called
senseless acts has its thread looping
back through the world and into a human heart.
And meanwhile
the gold-trimmed thunder
wanders the sky; the river
may be filling the cellars of the sleeping town.
Cyclone, fire, and their merry cousins
bring us to grief—but these are the hours
with the old wooden-god faces;
we lift them to our shoulders like so many
black coffins, we continue walking
into the future. I don’t mean
there are no bodies in the river,
or bones broken by the wind. I mean
everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar
of the tornado swears there was no mention ever
of any person, or reason—I mean
the waters rise without any plot upon
history, or even geography. Whatever
power of the earth rampages, we turn to it
dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever
the name of the catastrophe, it is never
the opposite of love.

— Mary Oliver

Many years ago (I won’t say how many), my sister and I were both teaching in schools run by truly terrible principals. Mine wrote me up for insubordination every time I dared to ask questions like: “Why has the special education teacher given my students a grand total of two hours of special education services between September and June?” (Her answer: “Stop asking questions.” Real answer: The special ed teacher was busy driving the principal’s mother to the bank.) Or: “I know the math teacher likes to hang with you instead of planning lessons, but it’s March and she neither knows my students’ names nor bothers to teach them much of anything.” (Solution: Jane gives up her free period to teach math for the rest of the year.) And my sister’s principal is best described by the simple fact that she only offered health insurance to a few select teachers (one of the perks of running a private school, I guess).

Needless to say, Kate and I spent a lot of time on the phone, commiserating. At the time, she was going through a naturalist training program, and part of the training involved picking a place outdoors to sit every day and observe. One day she called me in a state of great excitement, and told me that she had been out to her sit spot and had been watching a bark beetle voraciously chewing on a massive silver maple. And as she watched, she had an epiphany.

Bark beetles, she said, were not destroying the maple maliciously. They were bark beetles, and they were born to chew trees to death. And so, while it was possible to despair about the destruction they caused, and while one could wish for a world without bark beetles (although who knows what ancillary madness would ensue in such a world), it did not help to be mad at them, or try to reason with them, or attempt to change their nature.

Similarly, Kate said, there were people in the world who were simply born to be bark beetles. These bark beetle people chewed the world around them down to splinters, impelled not by a furious mind or an evil heart, but simply because the world was bark and they were bark beetles. And similarly, while one could wish for a world without bark beetle people (although who knows what ancillary madness would ensue in such a world), it did not help to be mad at them, or try to reason with them, or attempt to change their nature.

I cannot tell you how much this simple revelation has changed my life. I still get mad at all the ugliness and meanness and destruction - sometimes in a nerve-crescendo that shakes me. After all, there are the reckless drivers; the crappy neighbors who kidnapped my cat; the shitty therapists who have quit on my vulnerable child because they don’t have the courage or skill to work with anyone as smart and complex and vulnerable as she is; the kid who made three bomb threats in two weeks to my oldest’s high school, sending her - and no doubt many others - into a cascading panic; my former boss who felt that it was his right as a Very Smart Person to make everyone around him feel dumb and small; and on and on and on. And after all, there are the people who are literally murdering children right now (and many many other innocents) because destruction runs in their veins, and the people who destroy to get rich, and the people who destroy to get power (I’m looking at you, Congress), and, and, and…

What I am saying here is the world seems sometimes to be composed entirely of bark beetles. Especially lately.

Southern Pine Bark Beetle. Photo by Erich G. Vallery, USDA Forest Service - SRS-4552, Bugwood.org

Also, sometimes it happens in our lives that we are forced to ask AITBB?

(For those of you unfamiliar with modern slang, as I usually am, this means: Am I The Bark Beetle?)

I suppose the minute you ask the question you get trapped in some Mobiüs strip thought experiment, because simply asking AITBB shows more self-awareness than bark beetles are wont to show, and thus one cannot both be the bark beetle and also ask Am I The Bark Beetle? Or maybe you can. Maybe it’s really Schrödinger’s bark beetle. Maybe we are meant to have our minds messed with by men with umlauts in their names. Maybe it is late and I have not slept enough. Who is really to know?

Likely though it is simpler than I am making it all. It is good and right to ask, when our relationships with others go off the rails, when some small (or large) tornado of anger or destruction swirls around us and moves with us across the landscape, AITBB? And chances are the answer is no. Chances are that we are just clumsy with emotion sometimes, or careless, or even prone to moments of unfettered feeling we later regret. That just makes us human, not insectile. What a relief.

So if I am not the bark beetle (or at least most of the time I am not the bark beetle), but bark beetles abound, how do I live without despair? It is not easy but it is as clear as Kate’s original revelation: I remember that bark beetles are simply born into destruction. I remember that there is no intention, or, for human bark beetles, that the intention is rarely destruction just for the sake of destruction. I remember that being angry at the bark beetles or about the bark beetles is not the same as trying to heal that which they savage. I remember, if the name of the catastrophe is bark beetles, then they are never the opposite of love.

Spruce Bark Beetle. Photo by Steven Valley, Oregon Department of Agriculture, Bugwood.org