Fish-Flies

The June, 2010 fish-fly season is coming to an end.

Take a trip to the east side of Detroit and you will see them everywhere, adhered to walls like schools of dead fish, perfuming the air with their fishy odor.

Few things remind one so well of being in a particular place at a particular time as an insect invasion.  If you see fish-flies, you are near water and it is June. 

It could be worse; fish-flies neither sting nor bite, nor do they eat vegetation. They merely hover in great clouds around streetlights, their juicy bodies clinging in packs to the glass of lighted storefronts until they desiccate, or eventually carpet the streets so that a drive through St. Clair Shores or Grosse Pointe on a warm June evening with the windows rolled down will be filled with the soft music of their bodies crunching under the wheels.

For those interested in the science, fish-flies are in the genus Hexagenia of the order Ephemeroptera, the Mayflies. More science here and here (apparently the densities of Hexagenia in the Great Lakes are under threat- though you would never know it by visiting the east side of Detroit this past week).

Image Credit: http://www.lakestclairflyfishing.com/

Clarkston, Michigan | Narrative Magazine

I came across this lovely piece in one of my favorite online literary magazines, Narrative. I love the description of the narrators sense of wonder as he happens upon an intact ecosystem in the middle of suburbia. I particularly liked his sense of not wanting to go any farther, lest he happen upon a strip mall or a backyard that would destroy his sense of bewitchment.

I have spent the last ten years working with land conservancies and watershed councils on trying to preserve the high-quality ecosystems to which this essay refers, in the midst of the building boom. Now that the boom has gone bust, I often think about the reprieve given these places, both through our efforts at land conservation, and through the virtual stand-still of new construction.

Some think we will never return to those days of building bigger and bigger, farther and farther out; that when this economy heals the new development will be redevelopment of the urban core, finally. If so, are the sensitive ecosystems on the fringe of the exurban landscape out of harm's way? Can we direct our resources to restoration and redevelopment?

Clarkston, Michigan | Narrative Magazine