In the Stomach of a Damselfly

INTRODUCTION
Chris Staudinger
What you are about to read in this zine are the musings
and tales of nine young people who spent two nights in
a remote lodge on the edge of the Manchac marshes.
The place is called Turtle Cove Environmental
Research Station. It’s giant old wooden camp that is
only accessible by boat and is reportedly haunted by the
spirit of the old businessman who secluded himself in
the lodge and eventually died there. To my knowledge,
we did not meet his spirit, but we did meet otters and
other beings which you will soon meet in this zine. We
spent three days and two nights canoeing and walking
the long boardwalks that extend out of the property,
wondering about the man who built the lodge, the
people who cut down the cypress forest, and cats in
space. We observed the marshes, the creatures in the
mud beneath the marshes, the migrating birds, and
piles of scat from the previous night’s visitors drying
in the sun.
As we wrote and drew, we took our cues from
flow in nature: the patterns of balance, growth and
decomposition, drought and floods that created what
we saw around us, and we asked: what moves us? What
are we moving towards? Where are we going? What do
we want to make?
With our work, we tried to bring back pieces of this
place, keeping in mind that nature doesn’t care about
what is “good” or “the best.” Nature makes and makes
and makes and makes and makes and makes, and if
something sticks, then great, and if it doesn’t, then who
cares? The sun will come up blazing in the morning,
and something else will sprout anew. Nature may seem
gentle and perfect and careful, but it does so like a
firehose: a single black willow tree, for example, can