Chrysalis

Eagan, Minnesota was nothing but beautiful rolling hills, dense forest and verdant river valley back at the turn of the 19^th century. After pushing the Indians out, the rugged mish-mash band of settlers, who had been squatting at the fort for years, began to venture beyond the line and stake their claim to the now available land, once the danger of being dealt a hatchet blow to the forehead had passed. These folks started clearing trees and didn’t pause for more than a second or two to contemplate the history of the place. They saw an opportunity for themselves and got right to it. 

Big band saws were good at felling the trees and having a few pack animals on hand didn’t hurt. They tilled the ground and planted crops and figured out how they were going to make a go of it. The fort was just across the river and it was easy to go there and sell some meat and produce, buy provisions, steal a few things here and there, and start growing a homestead. Babies were born. People got to know one another. Feuds were started and settled. A community was formed.

The ground was fertile and families were mostly having success in growing crops, onions in particular. Onions were the currency of Eagan, just as tobacco had been the currency of old Virginia in previous times. All the families kept planting plenty of onions, red ones, yellow ones, white ones, too. They sold them at the fort, where they were loaded onto boats heading south, downriver. Those folks down in St. Louis must not eat nothing but onions, everybody thought. It certainly wasn’t as lucrative as oil, but a big barrel fetched a few dollars and that was enough to get ahead. 

However verdant and lush the valley, and however well-meaning and hard-working the people who populate it, a place is doomed if built upon hazardous foundations. Soon enough, the cracks started to show and things got a little weird. The ragtag band of soldiers and settlers that settled there were mostly either drunkards or fervent Christians, or sometimes both. Soon enough, they started turning on one another. Misunderstandings germinated and were not resolved. Plants did not bloom. The few trees that were left standing after all the timbering was done were stressed and wilting. And before long, the bottom fell out of the onion market due to a rumor going around that onions made one ornery and constipated. Huge piles of unsold rotting onions dotted the landscape, carmelized by the sun.

Mary Klondike gave birth to her thirteenth child on a hot summer night at the end of June. She named her Chrysalis, as a way to honor the monarch butterflies who frequented the area every summer, laying eggs on the underside of the milkweed leaves. The summers were nothing but wave after wave of insects: Flies, moths, mosquitos, dragonflies, locusts, caterpillars, bees, wasps and even chiggers. Every April, as the last of the snow was still melting away, the townsfolk of Eagan would come out of their little shacks and start to till the ground and get ready for the growing season. But, soon enough, they were chased back inside by the bugs.

Chrysalis, or Crissie as she was called, didn’t care about the bugs, and, in fact, she seemed immune to them. Others in her family would be itching their skin all night, full of bites, but Crissie was somehow able to avoid being bitten. She could go out at night whereas others could not. So, as she got older, she was entrusted with all nighttime outdoors activities. Go fetch some wood, bring that corn to the crib, get the cows in the barn, let the dogs out, bring in the milk, it was all entrusted to Crissie so the others wouldn’t get ravaged by bugs. 

The best time of year were the nights around the Summer solstice. As a family, they liked to hike a half mile or so to the top of the ridge, overlooking the river, facing west. The stars would slowly come into focus as the sun set in a majestic crimson display over the horizon. They would spread out their quilt and watch the magical celestial spectacle as they ate watermelon and practiced their arithmetic. But after a few years, the bugs got too thick and the family stopped going on these crepuscular treks. 

Although the town was struggling, more people kept arriving. Bigger and bigger clouds of mosquitos kept arriving as well. Trouble persisted in the little settlement of Eagan. Again, no one was allowed outside but Crissie. She started to hike by herself, not only to the top of the ridge, but down to the river as well. Sometimes she would see a boat going by, everything from big packet steamships to the one-person canoes that the Indians still used to get up and down the river under cover of darkness. For the most part, however, she was alone and that’s how she liked it. She ruminated a lot, and sometimes there’s not much one can do to control that. She climbed back up the hillside after a while, not even carrying a lantern because her night vision was so good.

In early September, locusts came and set upon all the crops, devouring everything. It was incredibly hot and smoky outside as well. Some brutish German immigrants, recently arrived from Saxony, had set the woods on fire trying to clear some land for planting and grazing. It quickly spun out of control. A large swath of the forest was burning, which seemed to drive the locusts out, but also was incinerating most of the remaining trees and infesting everyone’s home with smoke and ash. Crissie, exhausted and uneasy, retreated once again down to the riverbank for respite. She sat there all one cloudy afternoon, ruminating as usual, watching the locusts fly away through the smoky haze. 

Deep in her thoughts, she thought she heard someone, or something, say, “Eat that mushroom.” She hesitated for a moment, before looking around, bewildered. She spied a beautiful bespeckled mushroom growing out of a log right down past her bare feet resting upon the damp sand. Again, she heard a voice inside her head. “Eat that mushroom.” it said. She instinctively glanced to her left toward the river bank, and saw a small marten there, staring at her. She looked at the marten, somewhat convinced that the voice she had heard in her head was from that creature. The marten stared back at her.

She hadn’t eaten anything all day, since the locusts had pretty much destroyed everything. She had heard that some mushrooms were quite delicious and she had eaten quite a few in her brief lifetime, so she quickly ripped it off the log and plopped it in her mouth. It tasted like dirt, mostly, but she didn’t mind. She was hungry and it went down quick. She looked around trying to find another mushroom to eat but didn’t see any, so she glanced back at the marten, who was now gone.

Crissie laid back down and felt a stirring in her stomach. She saw intense and vivid lights in her head and felt a transformation taking place in her body. She felt weightless, like she was floating, and she could smell everything for miles around. She had been transformed into a monarch butterfly and she soared and flitted about high above the Eagan settlement. But she could see things looked a lot different, as if the mushroom had transported her through a time portal. The Eagan she flew above was no longer the same.

For one thing, the beautiful and varied landscape had been replaced by endless fields of corn and soybeans. Millions of rows of these two plants stretched as far as the eye could see. These fields were criss-crossed by roads packed full of countless Amazon delivery vans, rolling slowly in all directions, pulled over to the side of the road, flashers on, packages spilling out the side. Crissie, the monarch butterfly version, darted over her little town, looking for the places she knew, the little wood homes and sheds of her family and neighbors, but she did not see them, nor did she see her little walking paths and hiding places down by the river. These had been replaced by large corporate fortresses with stern, dark-hued, menacing buildings and finely mowed monochrome lawns, lighted towers, concrete barriers and acres of parking lots.

“Oh, how I long for the days of yore”, Crissie said to another monarch as it swooped past her. 

But it just kept swooping and didn’t bother to answer, landing on a nearby bee balm plant. “At least there’s still a little bit of wild left.” Crissie said to herself as she continued to survey the town. The magic mushroom had blurred her vision a bit and things were not as sharply in focus as she was used to.

She found her way down to a milkweed leaf and quickly fell asleep as an orange waning moon rose in the western sky. When she awoke, she was back in human form and surrounded by deer. They were all laying down, huddled together in a big, warm cluster. They gazed at her as she raised her head, licking her lips. She was no longer a monarch butterfly, but she was still thinking about nectar, and how tasty and delicious it was. She stumbled her way back home and found that her family had sold the house and moved to Montana, leaving her all alone.