Mapping Meaning, the Journal (Issue No. 1)

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ombus love Erin Halcomb Erin Halcomb loves everything nature. She has experience staffing a U.S. Forest Service fire lookout and working in fire suppression. She has also surveyed for wildlife, namely fishers and flying squirrels. She currently works in environmental education but enjoys freelance writing. She likes days spent walking. 126 Mapping Meaning, the Journal
ombus love Erin Halcomb This past spring, I fell in love with bees. There was some nuance to it; it wasn’t like I fell for every single thing that had four wings. I fell for the biggest, Bombus, those within the bumble bee genus. Their morphology resembles gnocchi. They have gold and black shag across their backsides, fringe all down their legs, and fur on their cheeks. Perhaps it was because they weren’t whizzing past, or half-deep in anthers, that my attention gained such traction. And neither was I, so to speak. I was on a foray for mushrooms but at best I was browsing. The woods were gilded in pollen. They echoed with thrush song. I bent down to pick up a castaway can and caught sight of a bumble on the ground. First, I was taken by her heft and her hair, and then by the way she carried herself. She was velveteen and bulbous. She crawled – marched, flounced – across the forest floor. Nearby, I heard another. I found her hovering low, also intent with survey. These were the Spring Queens, the lone survivors of last year’s colony. They, too, were hunting not for quarry but for home. They were searching for a bunker, for some abandoned burrow, to finish in waxen chambers. I began watching, I mean really seeing things, years ago. I’d been hired to do so, to sit on a mountaintop and look-out. I worked for the Forest Service. I watched for fires. I soon took notice of smaller beings. I began to hear the quiet types, humming. In the subalpine meadows surrounding the lookout, I remember watching a bee land and latchon to a bloomed obelisk. Its added weight had caused a sway and I’d smiled in simple pleasure. I knew little else about the bee’s labor than its byproduct, a name, pollination. Oh, but now I know. Only bits and bobs, but still: Bees are wasps that went vegan. Bumbles specialized further by becoming fleeced and all that fuzz enables them to fly in cold weather and on cloudy days. They summit peaks of 10,000 feet. They have stinky feet. They dig and spit and whirr; hitch together their film-thin wings; and heave their not-so-svelte selves to and fro swatches of color. For most of their lives, Bombus mine flowers. They pack loaves of protein into paneers on their hind thighs and, vamoose, they take to the aerial interstate. Flight speeds can reach 10 miles per hour. We arrange bumbles according to stripes, and by the length of their tongues. We study their flower fidelity. One scientist tied tinsel to the leg of a queen and chased after her in a quest to discover her lair.* Hives are hard to find. The largest bumbles in the world -- ginger ping-pong balls in Patagonia – are on the cusp of extinction. Parasites, habitat loss, and poison: we have not done right by them. Bombus franklini used to fly the meadows that I once strolled but none have been found for a decade. That’s about the same amount of time that has elapsed since I worked on the lookout, and it’s passed Issue N o 1 127
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Content 6 Introduction 14 Pollinate
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Introduction to Issue N o 1 Krista
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Pollinate Rebecca Clark 14 Mapping
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Pollinate Rebecca Clark Statement I
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Idaho Triptych Lynn Kilpatrick Lynn
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Idaho Triptych Lynn Kilpatrick Inva
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On This Site Jeremy Dennis 22 Mappi
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On This Site Jeremy Dennis The work
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On This Site Jeremy Dennis Council
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Pollinate Rebecca Clark 28 Mapping
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The Breath Camera: a prototype for
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Survival Series Gretchen Schermerho
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Identity, Narrative, and Miseducati
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Notes on an archive Nat Castañeda
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Page 75 and 76: In Conversation with Consciousness
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