On consolation

and why I love our daily walk

On Friday afternoon, it was cool (for August) and drizzly. Bea and Harriet and I set off on our normal walk: up the hill behind our house and through the woods to the gravel road. We’ve walked this path just about daily throughout the pandemic; on Halloween we even trick or treated here. Our path is worn now: the leaves and dirt packed down, fallen logs clear of bark where Harriet has scrambled across them. We stop to look at mushrooms (so few chanterelles this season!) and try not to disturb spiderwebs.

When we get to the the gravel road, Harriet or Bea will want to run, and on Friday Harriet was playing “crossing mountains.” She wanted me to run with her, and when I started to, I tripped over my sandals.

What is it about being an adult (especially an older-than-40 adult?) that makes falling so hard? I didn’t cry (tough girls’ code!) but I was surprised how much it hurt. Both of my knees were scraped, and my right big toe was somehow bloody.

“Blood is coming out of your knee,” Harriet observed. “Do you have holes there?”

“We should go back,” Bea said, looking toward the wooded path.

I decided we should keep going—I don’t like turning around, to see the same scenery twice on one walk (even if I see it every day). Plus, we hadn’t gotten to the stream full of leopard frogs, which we like to sneak up on. So we kept going.

“Poor Mommy,” Harriet kept saying. “Can I see the blood?”

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Bea said.

Finally we got closer to the frog stream. I took out my phone so I could video the frogs jumping, but then I noticed something pale pistachio green on the other side of the road. “Look,” I whispered to the girls.

Bea knew immediately what it was: a luna moth! We’d seen their wings along the river last summer—ten sets of wings, all on one day, and all following the same path. After that we did some research to learn about them: why you rarely see them alive (they are nocturnal and camouflage well among trees), what they eat (nothing! they don’t have functional mouths), and why we might have seen so many all at once (it was close to a full moon, which may have attracted a mating eclipse). Luna moths only live for about a week. (And yes, a group of moths is called an eclipse!)

This moth was perched among some dried grasses where our neighbor keeps a side-of-the-road pollinator garden. The girls crept closer, afraid to startle it. It never moved, only twitched a little. We read later that it was probably newly hatched, and waiting for its wings to dry. From its thick feathery antennae we could see that it was a male.

“This is nature making up for your fall,” Bea said confidently. I wasn’t too upset about the fall by then, but I have been kind of preoccupied: with work that I care about very much, that is also out of my hands; with back-to-school stresses that feel extra-high this year; with the evil politicalization of life-saving vaccines. Seeing the luna moth was exactly what I needed.

And right after that I found a four-leaf clover: score!

I love that both of my daughters think of nature as consoling, something that can make up for scraped knees or a bad day. Something worth protecting, but that also protects you, not just physically but also emotionally, even spiritually. My goal is to keep that feeling going, which is what the Frog Trouble Times is all about.

Here is a cool time-lapsed video of a luna moth hatching and unfolding its wings:

In this video, you can really see the way its markings mimic the branches and buds of a tree, which is part of its camouflage. Amazing!

Have a beautiful Sunday, friends! If you like, tell us about your favorite nature-as-consolation moment below: