Shadow Darner, Surrey, Maine

So far, 158 dragonfly species have been identified in Maine, one third of all those found in America. I’ve walked every day during the decades we’ve been going to Maine, and lately, since I’ve been noticing dragonflies, I always see them close to the house where we stay.

Depending on the time of day or the season, meadowhawks and the occasional darner hunt in the south meadow, along the old road to the bay. As I move east through the maples and pines and the thick bed of last year’s leaves, then across a wide expanse of wildflowers to Annie’s Pond, meadowhawks, large numbers of darners, and the occasional skimmer appear along the way. Many different brilliant blue damselflies line the pond edge like flying jewelry.

The best route for dragonflies begins where an active logging road turns west, half a mile from the house, but I turn east along a faint animal trail. Meadowhawks, damselflies, and often skimmers and darners hunt along this path, which leads to “Dragonfly Pond.” Dragonfly Pond is formed by a massive beaver dam—some years their lodges are visible in the distance. In late summer, two darner species hunt the edges with different-sized damsels (both bluets and dancers). At Dragonfly Pond I have seen each of the following at least once: black saddlebags, twelve-spotted skimmer, common whitetail (dozens mating this past September), widow skimmer, and possibly an immature, female bog hunter.

Now, I associate Maine with dragonflies in all their dimensions, in all their glory.

One evening I started walking along the main road. I would walk until Terry caught up with me in the car and together we’d drive to a dinner party with friends. A mile from our house a dragonfly lay splayed in the road after being hit by a car. Although visually it seemed fine, it didn’t move when I picked it up and laid it in my hand. I carried it until Terry came. “Look,” I said. “I found this dragonfly.”

“Is it alive?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

I left it on the dashboard while we ate.

Coincidentally (synchronistically?), the paper party napkins had a dragonfly motif on the corner. I folded mine and put it in my pocket and laid the deathly still dragonfly on it when I went to check.

Back home, I laid the dragonfly on its napkin on the kitchen counter. I swear I saw it move.

I pulled up a chair and watched it for a while before going upstairs for the model dragonfly that had been sitting on a shelf since I’d made it three years before.

Knowing my obsession, my friend Erin had given me a Metal Earth 3D model kit of a dragonfly. After freeing each of the twenty pieces laser-cut into the four-inch metal square, I’d used needle-nosed pliers, a magnifying glass, and tweezers to bend the tiny pieces into proper form and insert nearly invisible tabs into their proper slots.

Based on the size and its hindwings being broader than the forewings, I’d built a darner, one of America’s largest dragonflies.

Comparing the metal and the real insect as they lay there together, I determined the dragonfly I’d found in the road was also a darner. According to the field guide Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East by Dennis Paulson, its size and its faint abdominal markings suggested that my patient was a shadow darner, a female. “Abdomen tan with wide black ventrolateral stripe from S4–S9, covering larger parts of the segments toward rear,” for example. I wasn’t intimidated by the scientific language and hadn’t been since building the Metal Earth model.

By morning, the shadow darner had not moved, and I pronounced it dead. I placed it on its napkin in the corner of the garden near the steps. Later that afternoon, a large brown spider was eating that dragonfly. The next day, the exoskeleton was all that was left, like a tiny ancient plane crash.

I’d cursed Erin for giving me that model. As frustrating as it had been to build, though, I’d tripled my knowledge of dragonfly anatomy during the process.

I’d followed the steps in the “Assembly Flow Chart” exactly and in the order given. While assembling the model, I discovered that there’s much more to a dragonfly than wings, abdomen, head, eyes, thorax, and legs.

Using my field guide for reference, I’d labeled the parts on the instruction sheet with their anatomically correct names, noting interesting details. Part 7 properly bent became the box-like synthorax, to which the legs and wings are attached. This is a major part of the organism, housing the large and important flight muscles. Dragonflies fly with such efficiency, effectiveness, and effortless precision because each of their four wings operate individually.

Reproductive and digestive organs are contained in the long abdomen, its length providing weight to balance the dragonfly in flight. The darner’s abdomen is divided into eight segments—S3 through S10, which are important in distinguishing different species. An actual darner has bright blue segments (through S6), dull bluish green (S7–S8), and mostly dark (S9–S10). The abdomen parts are 12 through 19 in the instructions for the model.

The model head, including the dragonfly’s massive eyes, is comprised of parts 1 through 6. Each eye took forever to build. Each eight-tabbed, snowflake-shaped piece needed to be bent into a hemisphere. I learned about the face and mouthparts by their absence: The frons and clypeus, labrum, and mandible were too complex, too intricate, even for the sadistic designer who created this model. Part 4 was the smallest piece in my dragonfly puzzle, and although it was familiar from dragonfly photos I’d studied, I’d never wondered what it was. Fortunately it stuck to the tip of my spit-moistened finger long enough for me to grab with tweezers. Installing it required a second pair of tweezers—one to hold it, the other to bend four sides at a forty-five-degree angle and the two tabs ninety degrees. Then, holding the piece with one tweezer and the dragonfly head between my thumb and forefinger, I managed on the third try to insert each of the four tabs into their corresponding slots between the massive eyes on the dragonfly’s head. By applying pressure with my forefinger and turning the head, which I held between my bird finger and thumb, I secured it by bending the tiny tabs inside the dragonfly skull.

Once my hand uncramped, installing wings and legs was easier by a factor of ten.

Finally, after four intense hours and with a massive headache, I placed the finished dragonfly on my outstretched index finger, expecting it to fly.

Later, when the pain and suffering I’d attached to my dragonfly model had faded, I stopped to look at it carefully. I’d made mistakes building it: Its head drooped, its right hindwing was bent, and I’d reversed an abdominal segment (part 16). I thought about fixing these problems for two seconds before deciding that my dragonfly model was fine just as it was. Then I noticed part 4, recalling not how difficult it had been to mount, but that I had no idea what it was.

Part 4, I discovered, represents the dragonfly’s three “ocelli.”

Clustered between a dragonfly’s two compound eyes, the ocelli consist of three simple eyes. These eyes measure light levels, orient the organism toward the horizon, and map visual space. From the ocelli, eleven long neurons bypass the brain and run down the dragonfly’s neck, connecting it directly to motor centers at the base of each wing. Its wings operate in- dependently of one another and the information sent from the ocelli is not slowed down in the brain, which helps explain why dragonflies are the most effective flying hunters in the animal kingdom. They hunt without thinking. Thinking would only complicate things.

The Department of Defense is copying the dragonfly ocelli for use in micro air vehicle guidance systems—drone technology. No wonder we know so much about them.

Dragonflies are flying gyroscopes, able to keep their prey in the center of their vision at all times because of the direct ocelli-wing connection. They measure their prey’s speed and direction and don’t chase, but ambush. Imagine the terrifying effect a drone equipped with such a mechanism would have on its targets.

Dragonflies are the ultimate hunters, only stopping to sleep, mate, or lay their eggs. One continual hunt. Just reacting, in a magnificent way, directly to the pure, unfiltered experience they sense through their “third eye,” the ocelli. To every signal, seen and unseen. What would living that way be like?

Some believe we humans have a third eye, once exposed, now covered: the pineal gland. This pea-sized organ perched in the center of our brain contains the light-sensitive cells responsible for our circadian rhythms. It is also thought to be the source of spiritual thought and mystical experience, which is why in Hindu tradition it is considered “the third eye,” or sixth chakra. The sixth chakra—the Ajna (or brow) chakra—is the center of insight and inner wisdom we can trust without fear or delusion. It forms the gateway between the outer world of ordinary reality, and the inner world of the imagination and evolution. If open and awake, our third eye helps us imagine our lives. It is the third eye which sees and understands archetypal images. Those we refer to as seers have the ability to use their third eye. Hindus and Buddhists believe the third eye is located near the middle of the forehead, slightly above the junction of the eyebrows, that it represents the enlightenment one achieves through meditation—the “eye of consciousness” beyond physical sight. In Taoism and many traditional Chinese religious sects, opening the third eye is key to tuning in to the vast universal vibration.

The dragonfly’s third eye sits on the surface, in the center of its forehead, between its two massive compound eyes. Mine lies buried somewhere deep in the middle of my brain. Therein lies the difference, metaphorical as this may be. We modern humans must decide—we are free to ignore our third eye (in fact, the smooth functioning of society seems to depend on this dangerous ignorance), or we go looking for it using various techniques (dreams, meditation) to access all there really is to see.

Be like dragonfly, I think. React instantaneously to immediate signals. Decide moment to moment what action to take, which direction to turn.

Be like dragonfly, I think while recalling all those times when something sensed in my gut exploded a well-thought-out, analyzed decision.

Be like dragonfly, in the right place at the right time, living the infinite number of moments one at a time that make up a complete life.

Be like dragonfly, I think, parking at the post office. Arriving in town, I was unaware that I’d driven there, not recalling driving down the hill past the boatyard, crossing the East Blue Hill Bridge. Passing Blue Hill Bay, clueless as to whether the tide was in or out or what birds might have been floating there. So intensely was I thinking. Unlike dragonfly.

Excerpted from Brooke Williams’ new book Encountering Dragonfly: Notes on the Practice of Re-enchantment. Reproduced with permission from Uphill Books.