krista schlyer
conservation writing & photography
A Chesapeake Summer
Posted on August 27, 2020
Summer on the Chesapeake Bay, in five lines:
Hot, humid, thunderstorm.
Bald eagle tries to steal fish from osprey. Osprey crying out indignantly, loses fish.
Great blue heron barks at both of them, at no-one, at everyone and the general effrontery of the world.
Hot, humid, storm.
Jellyfish.
In a few more lines
Several days ago, at anchor near the Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge, dusk was quietly descending when Bill said, “Is there bioluminescence in the Bay?”
There wasn’t as far as I knew, but I went up on deck to see what he was seeing. A pale orange reflection of the dusky sky lay upon otherwise dark water. We watched and waited and presently there appeared a blue light. Then quick as a heartbeat it was gone. I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it.
“Am I seeing things?” Bill said.
If so we are having the same delusion, I thought. We kept on watching as dusk faded to dark. There was another pulse of blue light, floating along the side of Maggie May, and another, and another. Disks of pale blue, about the size of my open hand, drifting along with the tidal current, turning on, turning off. Bill and I sat in rapt audience.
We were the only boat in sight near the wildlife refuge, where wetlands and coastal forest cover the land and protect the water community, offering a haven to bald eagles, herons, gulls and terns, little snakes, blue crabs, and apparently bioluminescent jellyfish. This was my guess, as I had read somewhere that some jellyfish could illuminate in this way. The lights seemed to move in the manner of a jelly, kind of haphazard, without any apparent intention other than as a silent passenger upon the prevailing current. Utterly without aspiration they seem, like a dimly lit shadow of some listless being, but also radiating a profound passive grace. And full of blue surprise.
Bill looked up “bioluminescence” and “Chesapeake Bay”, and sure enough, there are several forms these watery lights can take, from the bacteria that lights the water itself at certain times and in certain places, to jellyfish.
Osprey on an abandonner sailboat in Swan Creek.
Living on a boat in summer in the Chesapeake, one hopes for such gentle wonder to distract from the heat, flies, not nearly enough wind for sailing or far too much from frequent storms. And the pollution.
The Chesapeake has made great improvement in the past decades, thanks to efforts by thousands of individuals and organizations and regulations that are leading us toward the right track. But it is still a deeply wounded ecosystem, as is its sub watershed the Anacostia River, and for many of the same reasons. Reasons that date back to Captain John Smith, herald of environmental and cultural woe for the Bay 400 years past.
When we decided to stay in the Chesapeake through hurricane season, I did some research into the healthiest waters of the bay, hoping to find someplace we could swim and cool off without worrying too much about one of us getting another skin infection, or worse. Such info is not easy to find. There are sites that list which beaches generally pass water quality tests that indicate the water is healthy enough to swim in. But even these waters after a rain and through much of the summer can carry dangerous bacteria and viruses. The ecology of the bay has been too deeply eroded over too long a period.
I found a site created by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources that mapped the state’s “Tier 2” waters. This Orwellian term is the official designation for the 253 relatively healthy streams, many of which lie within the greater Chesapeake Bay watershed. Most of these are not on the bay itself, but up in the smaller creeks. By the time their waters reach the bay, they have mixed with the foul runoff from farms, roads, and cities with antiquated sewer and stormwater systems. As a rule, healthier waters are not accessible by a sailboat. Most are nestled in some swath of natural land that has escaped the fate of most of the Mid-Atlantic region: becoming a shopping mall, housing development, urban area, agricultural or industrial development, or sporting complex.
Fishing boat in the Chester River.
The reality is, for hundreds of years we have treated this precious estuary, the largest in North America, as a tool for transportation, commerce and human recreation. The Chesapeake’s intrinsic value and its essential value to thousands of other species has escaped us.
Maryland’s environmental department estimates that 20 percent of the land in Maryland can be classified as a Tier 2 Watershed. This is much more than I would have imagined. But one-quarter of that is in danger of development or other harm. And fully 80 percent does not qualify as healthy watershed. With the large majority of the state’s landmass considered to be unhealthy for its waters, we have a long way to go. Still, 50 years ago, a healthy bay wasn’t even much of a consideration. Today it is, and tomorrow it will be more so if history is any guide. There is reasonable hope that one day the heroic efforts of every riverkeeper, watershed organization, motivated public servant and responsible citizen, will lead us closer to the state of grace the Chesapeake existed in once upon a time.
The Eastern Neck, much of which is healthy forested land, is one of those rare places in Maryland that offer a vision of what was and could be again. On the passage to our anchorage we saw skates sailing through the water, blue crabs, schools of fish attended by hungry gulls and terns, and many jellyfish. ( Generally this last item is met with groans, as swimming with them is just slightly less desirable than splashing around in E. coli. But the light show off Eastern Neck has given us a new appreciation. ) And over the past month living on the Bay aboard Maggie May, we have encountered enough wild surprise to imagine how a resilient watershed could rebound if we humans could learn to love the land just a little more.
As for Bill and I, we are currently in Rock Hall again, doing what I hope will be the last of the boat repairs for at least a little while. We are back at Haven Harbour Marina, which has truly been a haven for us through some emotional, financial and literal storms (this is where we weathered Tropical Storm Isiais.) Looks like we are back just in time. Hurricane Laura may be on its way to the Chesapeake.
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Confronting the Inner Squirrel with Farm Girl Grit
Posted on August 5, 2020
After Isaias
One of our first big weather events is behind us. Maggie May made it through Tropical Storm Isaias virtually unscathed.
We spent the day of the storm on high alert, as the wind forecasts were constantly changing. This uncertainty was the greater part of why we decided to go to a marina rather than ride the storm out in a hurricane hole in the Chester River. It was a good decision. I don’t think we were in the best mental state to weather near 50 knots at anchor. The past weeks since I last posted have been difficult– Coming to terms with the likely end of our long-planned circumnavigation, trying to adjust to a new outlook, and facing a near constant set of new challenges.
The cumulative effect has been a gnawing, fraying self-doubt, an inner squirrel sitting prettily on a shredded confidence nest in each of our psyches. Open water is no place for such nagging uncertainty, a fact brought home to us every few days on the Maggie May.
A few days before Isaias, we were sailing from Still Pond in the northern Chesapeake to Rock Hall, Maryland, where we planned to re-provision before heading back into the Chester River for a while. The storm predictions at that point were mild for the Chester, and there were several protected anchorages we wanted to explore. We were sailing 15-20 knots, a good wind speed for Maggie May, but we were head to wind and the Bay was rough with unusually steep waves. We decided to forego the genoa (the large sail at the bow of the boat) and use our solent stay and a smaller sail we got for heavier weather. Bill was hanking on the sail, I was driving, and as he started to trim the sheet, CRACK!, the sheet snapped and started whipping around the deck, lashing hard against the dodger (the covering over the cockpit), out into the angry air beyond the boat, and back SLAM! onto the dodger, over and over…and over. The boat was being jerked by waves and tossed and pulled by wind.
Bill said “We need to take the sail back down.” We didn’t have an extra sheet on hand to replace the broken one. Good to know. And the flailing spasms of the sail were dangerous. “Lower the halyard to me when I get to the bow.”
Bill wrestled with the wild sail as the boat tossed about, I tried to keep us on the smoothest course, then put the helm on auto and went forward to help him stuff the sail down below. Once it was stowed, we rolled out the genoa and continued sailing through the rough bay waters.
This is not an unusual intense moment on a sailboat. A year ago it could have happened and not rattled me much. I might have even found it exhilarating. But that day it stuck with me, along with the nausea and fatigue I always get from rough days on the water. Bill took the helm most of the day, and I tried to steady my wavering heart and belly. We arrived in Swan Creek near Rock Hall, anchored, and I retreated into my thoughts.
Thunderstorm approaching Cape May
So much has happened with Maggie May over the past 7 years, so much in the past year, in the few months since we moved aboard. I feel at this point as if I am always teetering off balance, waiting for the next thing to happen that will push me down again. Bill and I each have a constant inner monologue going, whatever we are doing, about what could possibly go wrong next. Though as the squirrel demonstrated, some challenges are just beyond the realm of imagination.
I consider myself a pretty tough person, but I am confronted by fear in a way I never have been before, on a sailboat or otherwise. I’ve spent a lot of time recently telling myself, ‘You are not equal to this task. You’re not strong enough, mentally or physically. You’re too old. I’ll luck has beaten you.” But my heart holds fast to everything I had hoped for in this journey, and I think about all that has come before, so many challenges met and made into memory all the way back to ancestral memory from the early 1900s in rural Kansas.
First the recent past.
The morning after the squirrel chewed up our sail Bill woke with a fever and aches and pains. His doctor set him up with a test for Covid 19. My mind reeled over the absolute worst that could happen. He got the test the following morning. As we waited for the test results a new friend at the marina came over to say goodbye, expecting we were heading out, and I told him about Bill’s illness. He already knew about the squirrel, and barnacles, osmotic blisters, faulty bottom job and numerous other challenges we had faced over the past years.
“Did you guys do a renaming ceremony for the boat?” he asked with some concern, the idea of very bad luck being written upon our lives. I told him we had done a nice blessing of the boat when we launched. His eyebrows knitted. Then he told me what he did when he renamed his boat, based on a lot of research into how you rename a boat. “I have a friend who renamed his boat without taking the proper steps and he has had all sorts of ill luck.”
Libations for Poseidon
Burning all evidence of Kahouteck
I chuckled a bit, assuming he was at least partly joking, and thinking ‘Sailors, superstitious bunch.’ But after he left, I immediately went to look it up on the internet. I found one million entries about how exactly you rename a boat without incurring Poseidon’s wrath.
I started following the procedure to the letter. Renaming a boat requires taking all reference to the former boat name off the boat. I scoured every crevice and cranny aboard. Went through every binder and book. There were several Vilkas items, the wolf blanket and a key chain, and I even found one piece of paper that had the name of the boat two owners ago – Kahouteck (which sounds like an Aztec curse, but is actually the name of an astronomical phenomenon ). This occupied me for hours, but Bill was in bed with a fever waiting for test results, so I had some time on my hands.
The renaming ceremony requires writing the old name of the boat on a piece of metal with water soluble ink, which you will drop in the water. I didn’t have a metal name plate, so I wrote Vilkas on a potato chip in pencil, and Kahouteck on a Ritz cracker. I worried about not following proper procedure, but I figured if it was an item of great value it would work just as well, and dissolve all the faster. Poseidon would be pleased, and Vilkas and Kahouteck would give some “nourishment” to the fish.
You also have to take off any reference to the new name, prior to the ceremony. I gathered all this up, including Original Maggie May’s ashes, which sit in a central spot on the boat. We put all of this Maggie May gear on the dock. I covered the stern with a scarf, because Maggie May has her name there. Once all this was done, I waited til Bill was feeling a bit better and then roused him from his sick bed. We carried out the ritual, using the prescribed plea to Poseidon to vanquish the names of Vilkas and Kahouteck from his records, and to add Maggie May and watch over her.
I also said the proper prayer to the four winds and added in a plea to every sea god I could find in my book of world mythology.
We made ourselves right with the gods. Bill went back to bed and I figured whatever happens next is well beyond our control.
The next morning Bill got a call that his test was negative for Covid. He was in bed for another day, but felt good enough to head out the following day. So it worked! Well, not if the past few weeks are any guide, during which we have run aground twice (once was our fault), gotten stung by jellyfish, had a staff infection, run over a crab trap which got stuck in our prop and damaged our rudder and cutlass bearing, and snapped a sheet. These things are all par for the course on a sailing adventure, but happening on the heels of everything else, they knocked us down to the ground every time. The crab trap in the prop happened near Cape May, where we were planning to jump off north toward Maine. In Cape May, getting the prop untangled and assessed, we decided that we needed to instead head back to the Chesapeake Bay, stay good and safe during the storm season, work on our sailing skills, (an unlucky sailor has to be extra prepared) and regain our trust in ourselves and the future of this journey. 
A tropical storm followed us here, and regaining my confidence has been a daily affair. Recently, my mind has turned often to the boat’s namesake, once removed. Not Original Maggie May, but the woman Maggie was named after, my granny. Her name was Pauline Margaret, and she went by Pauline all her life, but told me one day a few years before she died that she always wanted to be called Maggie. My granny was a tough woman. She grew up on a farm in Kansas and lived through two world wars, Spanish Flu, the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. She kept that farm girl fortitude all her life. She was also terrified of water and storms and mayonnaise and untidiness. But she kept her chin up, always. Now, when my heart begins to cower, I think of her, ball up my fist like she taught me, and carry on.
Note to friends:
I thank all of you for your care, kindness and support. We are ok. We’ve spent some hard days and done some reckoning and are at peace with looking at this journey in another way, waking each day and seeing what it brings, doing our best to live life ever present and appreciative.
Upon much reflection I can see very clearly that the leap of faith we took 15 years ago and every day since, the intension that brought us to this place was not in vain. For the idea was never truly to make miles across the ocean, but to learn how to live again. To set ourselves in the crucible of nature and see what its foundational motion made of us. To let go of whatever the waves erode, whatever gravity wears down, whatever the salted water scrubs away. To hold on to what the winds bear up, and whatever remains at the end of this adventure. I still believe we will be the better for it.
And I wish each of you courage in the challenges that come your way, and a stout heart in these uncertain times.
Fate Turns on a Squirrel’s Teeth
Posted on July 12, 2020
On the morning of July 9 my journal entry began, Setting off again this morning at high tide. We’ll see what transgresses. Headed to Maine.
It was to be our second attempt at a launch, but it followed the fifth or sixth major named storm in the life of our circumnavigation dreams. Still, we were both hopeful. We had no beautiful friends to wave goodbye to on the docks, and no champagne to sprinkle on the bow, but the day was calm as we pulled out of our slip and made our way to the mouth of Swan Creek and into the Chesapeake Bay. I’m not going to relay what happened next, it was the scariest moment I’ve ever had on a boat, but it’s a long, and in the end, humorous story that will wait for a book’s telling one day. This blog focuses on what happened afterward, which was not so humorous, despite the lead photo in this blog. 
About an hour after we entered the bay, we still had no wind and were motoring along, which often makes me sleepy. So I laid my head down on Bill’s lap and looked up at the mast towering into the cloud-tufted blue sky. After a while, I asked Bill, “Can you still see the Bay Bridge?”.
“Just barely,” he replied.
So I sat up and scanned the horizon to the hazy south. I couldn’t see the bridge until Bill pointed. It was barely visible in the thick summer air, and I marked it in my mind, the Bay Bridge is behind us.
Just then the wind started to pick up and Bill got excited to raise the main sail. We had only sailed once in the month since we left our home port in Deale. So I took over the wheel and Bill went forward to prep and raise the halyard. As the sail was going up, suddenly Bill stopped and his face fell. All he said was “No. No.”
I saw a cascade of white feathers, or something light like that, scatter onto the deck and float back along the starboard side of the boat. I thought a bird had nested in the sail, or been killed by a predator and left in the sail. But then I saw Bill sink to the deck on all fours, so I knew it was something much worse. I steadied the boat and went up to the mast. There was a gaping hole in the sail, which, as it gently flapped in the mild breeze rained a shower of feather-light dacron onto the deck. Two feet of sail had been chewed away. Our brand new sail.
We had waited years to get that sail, wanting to spare ourselves the huge expense of it until we were ready to head out on the trip. It was ruined. It took a moment to make sense of it, but suddenly I remembered earlier that day I had seen squirrel footprints on our hatch and heard soft footfalls on the deck. Knowing how important a nest is to a creature, I went to scan the sail bag and sure enough, there was a terrified squirrel crouching at the back of the boom.
Bill and I were silent for a long time. Then a period ensued that I cannot recount here except to say that Bill turned the boat around, back toward the marina at Haven Harbour, and when I coaxed him into unfurling the only in-tact sail we had left, it was because I believed it would be the last sail we ever had and I wanted to remember it.
Two days later, we ushered the squirrel from the boat and have had the sail repaired as best as it can be. It will never be fully strong again, but it may last a while. We have decided that we can no longer believe in the circumnavigation dream. We can’t even expect we will get to Maine at this point. Or out of the Chesapeake Bay. But we have provisions for several months on the boat, and many, many books we want to read and some songs we want to learn and sunsets to see and squirrels to forgive.
We hope to head out again in a day or two with the only intention being to follow where the wind leads us, take what challenges arise, care for the boat as best we can, and love each other better than we ever have.
Thank you all for following along on this journey, wherever it may lead.
The Voyage Has Begun
Posted on June 16, 2020
Chesapeake Bay: Rockhold Creek to Chester River
6-14-2020
Last Tuesday, June 8, 2020 we cast off lines at Town Point Marina in Deale, Maryland, and headed out into the Chesapeake Bay for what we hope is a 3-year voyage around the world. Dear friends began arriving around 8 am and we said a few words, read a poem of blessing, and sprinkled some champaign on Maggie May’s bow. The surge of emotion that accompanied all of this, caught me off guard. There are just some times in life when you have worked so hard on something, given everything you possibly have to make a dream become a reality (or stave off some catastrophe), when past, present and future well up together for a moment. All this to say, I barely got my words out, they were choked and garbled with raw relief, joy, apprehension and possibility. I think my friends understood. Here is the poem in full:
blessing the boats
by Lucille Clifton
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
Several friends sent this poem to me over the past few months, knowing our departure was imminent. It is so perfect in so many ways.
I looked back for a long time at my friends Margaret, Valerie, Dave and Anne waving goodbye from the dock where we spent so much time preparing Maggie May, and at our friends Tom and Emily who had brought their canoe to see us beyond the jetty. I looked back as long as I could, to remember that moment forever, to feel that love and the waves of gratitude for the life we have lived up to now. When I turned finally towards the bay, I turned to the great unknown I have longed for for all these many years, through so much grief, anxiety and inner turmoil. I turned toward fear and wonder and adventure and a life scoured to its barest elements.
The first leg of this voyage will be northerly so we headed the boat up the Bay towards the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The wind was light, 5-7 knots, but we managed to sail most of the way up to the bridge. I’d never passed under this immense span before. I’m not one to find awe in infrastructure, given all the damage it does ecologically, but passing under the Bay Bridge was something to remember, in part because of its mammoth imposition on the entire viewscape, and also because it was further than I had ever taken Maggie May to the north.
Beyond the bridge we made straight for the Chester River, where we planned to anchor for the night. This river, the longest navigable waterway on the eastern side of the Chesapeake Bay, is home to the Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge, where we hoped to spend most of our time for the next days. But the wind was not favorable for an anchorage near the refuge, and the wind decides and we abide, so we headed deeper into the river to a little cove near the Comegys Bight. It was a good thing we did, because the weather grew nasty over the next few days.
Before the storm we had a few trips out in the dinghy to explore the nearby wetlands, beach and forest, finding many surprises, including the largest concentration of brown water snakes I have ever seen. Bill, terrified of snakes, vowed he would never set foot in this water after we made this discovery. We poled the dinghy into a shallow stream through thick wetlands and on the way out I noticed a little snake face staring out at us from the reeds. And then another and another and then, when we reached the mouth of the stream, a snake swam in right front of the dinghy with a fat, pale yellow fish with bewildered eyes, clamped in the snakes satisfied but anxious maw. The fish was easily three times the size of the snake’s head. I didn’t know they hunted for fish, and it was incredible to see this in action.
Bill did not experience the same delight over this discovery as I did.
As we got back to the Maggie May Bill was trying to secure the dinghy (Minnie May) and he wrenched his back painfully. His back had been bothering him for weeks, but I think the terror over the snakes and the jolting movement of the boat pushed him over an edge. And he probably had not been allowing his body to rest over the past weeks leading up to launch. Now his back has said, you will stay put for a while. So we have stayed anchored in this same Chester River spot for many days longer than we would have. Storms rolled over us and rolled on. Weekend boaters tubed in circles around us, their wakes tossing Maggie May about. Sun set and rose, casting its light and darkness upon the world. 
I am content, wherever we are. I’ve spent the past 5 days learning how to live this life. I have learned many things, some important and some not so much. Here are 5:
- Clothes are a nuisance, I shan’t be deploying them very often.
- Peeing over the side of the boat (with the assistance of a she-wee, a tinkle-belle or other device) is liberating. Women of the wild, you must get one of these if you have not already.
- Flies are obnoxious on land, intolerable on a boat.
- Beer tastes delicious on land, on a boat the trumpets sound and the angels sing.
- Being able to produce all of one’s own energy without dirty fossil fuels or industrial scale renewable energy is one of the best feelings I’ve ever had. (I’ll do a blog on our systems one of these days.) We have met or exceeded our energy needs for the past 5 days with our solar panels and wind generator.
Setting Sail
Posted on June 6, 2020
Our planned route. Just run that US East Coast line a little further north, and hopefully it won’t change much. PHOTO: Margaret Boozer-Strother
Launch is imminent. Destination flexible.
So much has changed from when we first started planning this voyage 15 years ago, even in the past few months, right down to the direction we will be going. Our hope had been to travel southward along the Intercoastal Waterway to South Carolina, then head out into the Atlantic to the Bahamas, then following a westerly route through the Panama Canal and around the world back home again. That may still happen but Covid-19 has shut down most of the countries we were planning on visiting, including our first stop outside the United States. A few countries are opening, but tentatively, and it is very uncertain how their residents feel about sailors coming to their lands from far away, especially Covid hotspots like the United States. This may change in time, but hurricane season is looming—three named storms already, which means it is likely to be a bumpy summer in the hurricane belt.
This voyage has always been about finding some peace and beauty and getting to know the world in a deeper way. Foisting ourselves upon wary islanders during intense weather seasons just doesn’t fit that goal. So we are heading….north! We’ll stay in the United States for the hurricane season and reassess in November. For now, starting at any moment when all of our final projects come together and we have all provisioning and life-ordering finished, we aim toward Maine. We’ll stop at National Wildlife Refuges, National Seashores and other natural places along the way, taking our time, listening to the sounds of the water and the life that is ever drawn to it.
As promised in my last blog, here is a tour of the SV Maggie May.
And here’s a special musical treat from our friends Blue Plains, apropos for this moment. They played this song at our going away party in February, just weeks before the world shut down. So glad we got to see so many shining, beautiful faces that day. We carry you with us.
If you’d like to follow Maggie May as she travels, follow this blog and check out our Maggie May tracking map.
The Sinlessness of Predation
Posted on November 2, 2015
This week I’m starting a monthly blog of excerpts from my new book Almost Anywhere: Road Trip Ruminations on Love, Nature, National Parks and Nonsense. This first excerpt is one of my favorite passages from the book, about one of my favorite places, the Cranberry Glades Botanical Area in the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia. And its about one of my favorite plants, the carnivorous pitcher plant. If you like the excerpt, there’s more where this came from. Pick up a signed copy of the book in my bookstore, or get a copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or, even better, your local bookstore.
Excerpted from Almost Anywhere, by Krista Schlyer
Sufficiently awakened, we decide to make the thirty-minute drive to Cranberry Glades Botanical Area. As entertainment on the way, Bill and I try to sing “The Little Drummer Boy,” but cannot come up with the words. For twenty minutes we sing a loop of: “So, they told me, parumpapumpum, a new born king to see, parumpapumpum, da da da da da da, parumpapumpum, rumpapumpum.”
When we arrive at the Cranberry Glades, we step out into a misting rain for a short hike. Bill sets Maggie in the back while he rummages around looking for her leash and a plastic bag to pick up any droppings Maggie might make along the way. I hear him singing to her as he searches, “You get to walk with us, parumpapumpum.”
Maggie’s ears perk up and she cranes her neck to look up at Bill.
“I’ll get a bag for you, parumpapumpum.
Maggie’s alert eyes say, ‘Yes, yes, go on…I’m listening’
“We’ll put your shit in it, parumpapumpum, rumpapumpum rumpapumpum.”
When Bill has Maggie all squared away, we set out for a walk on the boardwalk that passes over a rare remnant of bog formed 10,000 years ago when glaciers marched over West Virginia. In most places this far south, this ecosystem could not have gained a foothold. But here, nestled in a cool wet crook of the Appalachian Mountains the cranberry bog took root. Cranberries, one of the few fruit species native to North America, were a staple for the land’s earliest human inhabitants. The plant itself can live for 100 years, and generations upon generations of its ancestors have amassed as a spongy platform of peat upon which rests the current blanket of bog plants.
In this place, the death of a thousand years of plant life rests in peace just below the surface of the landscape and forms a springy carpet that cushions the current generation of vegetative, but not vegetarian, life. Because the land is acidic and nutrient poor, some plants must rely on predatory prowess to survive. The sundew attracts insects with sweet secretions along the length of its tentacle like stalks. When the insect takes the bait, it becomes stuck in the sticky liquid, and begins to struggle for freedom. Alert to this movement, the plant contracts to more fully envelop the insect and then secretes enzymes to digest the hapless creature.
In similarly sneaky fashion, the pitcher plant lures insects into its funnel shaped leaf. When prey falls inside, it becomes trapped in a sort of stomach soup of enzymes.
Carnivorous plants hold a special fascination for us humans. We think of plants as benign, sedentary, guileless. But members of the “other” kingdom have special niches and strategies for survival just like we do in the animal kingdom. We are all looking for ways to hold on, enraptured by life in all its cruel kindness. The infinite ways that we manage to do that, conjured up by countless forms of life, offer an eternity of lessons in living. And the pitcher plant in particular, presents a perfect symbol: It represents a form of life that has by necessity adapted itself through the ages of the earth into a creature stunning in its beauty and brutality.
As I observe pitcher plants sprouting out of the boggy ground in the Cranberry Glades, I recall a reflection by Janisse Ray in her book Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.
She writes, “The pitcher plant taught me to love rain…Its carnivory taught me the sinlessness of predation, and its columns of dead insects the glory of purpose no matter how small. In that plant I was looking for a manera de ser, a way of being–no, not for a way of being, but of being able to be. I was looking for a patch of ground that supported the survival of a rare, precious and endangered biota within my own heart.”
Note: These photos not taken at the Cranberry Glades.
krista schlyer 
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