Hungry Little Caterpillars

Last night, while watching "Nature," Mark and I were blown away by the life of the Arctic Wooly Bear Caterpillar (left).  What on earth is such a delicate creature doing in such harsh climes?  During the sliver of summer that visits the Arctic each June, the Wooly Bear Caterpillar is eating every green thing he can cram down his little craw, all with the hope that he might turn into something that can fly away.

By summer's end, though, the little guy hasn't eaten enough to become a moth.  Instead, he finds a spot and curls into a little ball, where we assume he is quietly calling "uncle" to the wintery death that awaits him.   Against all odds, though--his tiny system shut down and frozen--the caterpillar is actually laying in wait.  Even when the temperature dips to minus 100, he lays in wait until the following spring, when he thaws out and starts munching away. . . only to be frozen again six months later.  This goes on for seven years.  Seven years! But one June day--finally!--he's eaten enough to begin his metamorphosis.

Suffice it to say that, in the Holt household, Eric Carle's Hungry Little Caterpillar has taken a back seat to the Arctic Wooly Bear Caterpillar, when it comes to top moths-in-process.

What would happen if we spent a year focused on the small things in our lives?  All those little things wedged between all those Big Things that Demand Capital Letters?  Like the Arctic Wooly Bear Caterpillar, I think we'd find ourselves changed.  More patient.  More focused.  Fortified by these little moments and, perhaps, even braver in the face of the Big Things we will inevitably encounter.

Big Things will always be there--brash and brassy, exhilarating and exhausting.  Awash in air horns and neon lights, Big Things have an obliterating quality to them, as they run their fat fingers along the edges of all the small moments that make up most of our days and nights.

No, this year, I'm going to turn my attention to the Arctic Wooly Bear Caterpillar.  To quiet afternoons spent with a good book.  To the joy of bad dance moves and that one minute each morning when the sky turns into a Creamsicle.  I am going to spend this year among the less-showy parts of my life, wondering at and wandering with the small things that do not holler.