Prompt Entry #4

There are a lot of little things you have to look for when you first get on the stream. There's the temperature of the water and the air, the currents of the wind, the layers of substrate and the flow of the water. There are a hundred little factors that a good fisherman has to consider every time he goes to wet a line. Among those hundred little things, there's one that tells a better story of the stream than the others all combined. There, on the smooth exposed curves of the rocks at the high-water line, the stonefly leaves its hollow husks, their backs split length-wise, clinging to the stone. To most people, they look threatening and alien: dessicated shells with their elongated antennae, their mantis-like forearms barbed and hooked against the stones. The husks can be as big as two inches when the stonefly molts to become an adult. A two-inch bug like that can look a horror to anyone unfamiliar with their place in the world.

Gold stonefly nymph, last pupal stage

A good fisherman will know that stoneflies are the sign of the health of the stream. The more dessicated shells you can spot on the streams sides, the healthier the stream as whole. Trout especially live on the bounty of stoneflies, and trout is what draws most of us to the streams. As they grow, stonefly nymphs eat stream vegetation, grow fat for the trout and the birds. But pay attention: stoneflies so more than just fill a niche in the food web. Their bodies are soft underneath, and they absorb pollutants readily from the waters around them. They will let you know if a river is healthy, if the waters are still pure and still lively.

The bigger shells are the last to be molted, the last skin to be shed before becoming an adult. An elderly man as a fly shop once told me that they come from the order Plecoptera, the Greek name for "braided wings." When they go through a final molting, they unfurl a long set of wings that they carry overlapped across the length of their back. But the wings are a trade-off of sorts. When they molt, they lose the mandibles they had as a nymph. They gain their wings, but they give up their mouths. That last molt gives them one week to live, starts the countdown as they starve without means to eat. Those final husks have something tragic about them: one the one hand, they let us know that the stream is still well, still supporting its complex web of life; but on the other hand, they are a kind of swan song, a last act and exclamation of a creature with profound significance on its world.

Adult with wings folded