Emergence of the Swallowtail

Warm temperatures have persisted this month and so I was not surprised to see a caterpillar actively engaged in life yesterday.

Since I did not recognize the green caterpillar with a yellow "necklace" I turned to my field guide and was delighted to learn that it is destined to be a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, like the one (from 2008) pictured at the top of this page.

Looking back through my notes, I came across a set of photos, quotes and observations from July 13, 2008:

"The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity."    -    George Carlin

"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."
R. Buckminster Fuller

"A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly."
Andre Gide

[July 13, 2008]  A few minutes ago, I happened across a black [Pipevine] swallowtail butterfly that had just emerged from its chrysalis. You could call it a new beginning, although it means the swallowtail is commencing on the final month of its life. For half a year or more, the swallowtail has lived as something other than a butterfly, first as a caterpillar and then as a pupa.

The caterpillar feeds on the foliage of umbellifers, such as carrot, fennel, angelica, dill and milk parsley plants, growing rapidly and shedding its outgrown skin four times. Eventually, the mass of the caterpillar’s body breaks down to provide nutrients to the cells of the young pupa that will develop inside the chrysalis and burst forth as a butterfly.

As soon as it can fly, the butterfly seeks a mate to produce the fertilized eggs that will be laid on a food plant and start the cycle all over again when they hatch as tiny caterpillars.

The three photos above are of this afternoon's swallowtail. Here's a swallowtail that I saw last August.

For a view of the stages of the swallowtail’s life cycle:
http://www.pbase.com/rcm1840/lifecycleofblsw

From another source, here's time lapse video of the swallowtail breaking out as a butterfly:

And if you're inclined to raise a swallowtail to maturity, click here for detailed instructions:

http://www.glorious-butterfly.com/black-swallowtail-butterfly.html

"The butterfly's attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it. We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign." Primo Levi

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough." Rabindranath Tagore

"Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." Nathaniel Hawthorne

It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing

Travel north on Highway 28 out of Franklin, NC and you’ll catch glimpses of the Little Tennessee River here and there. If you’re especially good with directions, you might leave 28 and find the gravel road that takes you to Needmore. It is a minor miracle that this free-flowing stretch of the river was not impounded behind a hydroelectric dam. The power company that owned Needmore certainly entertained that possibility, until about 30 years ago, when it agreed to sell the land, which is now protected under the state gamelands program.

Only one bridge crosses the river as it flows through Needmore and you won’t be driving across that bridge. It is one of North Carolina’s few remaining footbridges, and what a fine bridge it is!



I can’t tell you exactly how many state-maintained footbridges survive in 2025. I know that some of the mountain counties which contained numerous suspension footbridges were hit hard by Hurricane Helene last year, and many bridges in Yancey and surrounding counties were wiped out by that storm and flooding.

But the bridge in Swain County still stands, and is the highlight of any visit to Needmore. I should have measured the length of the bridge. "The length of a football field" would be good approximation.  It spans a broad and shallow section of the river and the center support of the bridge sits upon an island in the middle of the waterway.



No words or pictures would do justice to the spectacular scene as I saw it yesterday, a perfect autumn day. Nevertheless, I came away with plenty to talk about.



I did notice padlocks attached to sides of the bridge. This is something I’ve seen on other bridges. I guessed at what it meant and I was about right. Starry-eyed couples come to the bridge, snap a padlock onto the structure and then toss the keys into the river as a symbol of their unbreakable bond. Supposedly, this practice dates back to ancient China or, at the very least, to an Italian book and movie from about twenty years ago.



The article that disclosed this custom cautioned against the practice as it could compromise the integrity of bridge. I scoffed at that warning, until I read:

Between 2008 and 2015, an estimated 700,000 padlocks were attached to the Pont De Arts bridge in Paris. Although a single lock weighs just a few ounces, having so many was equivalent of adding the weight of 20 elephants to the bridge. As a result, a section of the railing collapsed into the river. Afterward, the city removed all locks and has continued to do so ever since. There's even an activist group, No Love Locks, that advocates against the practice and goes after influencers and brands that try to incorporate the imagery into their marketing.

For now, the Needmore bridge should be alright, as long as no elephants try to cross it.

I drove right up to the steps of the bridge on the west side of the river. If you walk across the bridge and down the stairs on the other side, you’ll find a gravel road. I know exactly where that road is, but to drive from the western end of the bridge to the eastern would require 11 or 12 miles of travel, if not more.

While I was on the bridge, I took note of some construction details. Hundreds of steel rods were heated and bent to form part of the support mechanism for the foot boards.



The NC Department of Transportation sheds more light on the role of these bridges and how they were assembled:

Pedestrian suspension footbridges found in the mountains of western North Carolina are known colloquially as swinging bridges because of their notorious bounciness.

Whether a modest footbridge or a long-span highway bridge, the principles of suspension technology are the same. A continuous cable supports the deck by means of suspenders. The cable is in tension, and thus materials such as rope, bamboo and wire with a high resistance in tension historically have been very suitable for the type and usually quite economical.

Suspension footbridges were built in numbers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A combination of topography, isolation, rural poverty, few good roads, many families without automobiles, and limited resources for building bridges provide a context for why the suspension footbridge was well-suited to Appalachia.

Mountain rivers frequently flood​ and the inexpensive footbridges could be quickly built and easily replaced. They also were a way to provide alternate all-season crossings for isolated farms and residences.

The footbridges were often in narrow valleys, constructed to provide access from the road or railroad on one side of a stream to houses, fields or paths on the opposite bank. The bridges were used by residents to walk to the store, post office, mailbox, church or school.

Unfortunately, none of the first-generation, locally built, suspension footbridges are known to survive. All of the examples identified are second or later generation examples built as replacement bridges by the State Bridge Maintenance Unit from 1947 to 1965. Most have been rebuilt once or twice since then.

The bridges are largely composed of salvaged or modern stock materials such as steel rods, bolts, washers, dimensional lumber, and woven wire fence that are commonly found in state maintenance yards. With few exceptions, the towers are salvaged beams, particularly truss members from old highway bridges, that have been cut up and welded together.

In 2005 NCDOT maintained 21 suspension footbridges in Graham, Jackson, Macon, Mitchell, Swain and Yancey counties. The oldest swinging bridge in the state, and one of the most complete, was built by the Maintenance Unit in 1947 northwest of Bakersville (on the site of an earlier footbridge) to provide a safe path for children crossing Big Rock Creek on their way to school (Mitchell County Bridge 223).

The article from the NC DOT does include a photo of one Little Tennessee footbridge in Macon County, along with a descriptive caption.



A suspension footbridge over the Little Tennessee River (Macon County Bridge 330) in Cowee, built in 1964 on the site of 1948 and 1916 predecessors (source: NCDOT bridge inspection files).

If I’m not mistaken, though, that bridge and one other bridge in the Cowee/Oak Grove vicinity have been removed. All the more reason to make the trip to Needmore to visit one impressive footbridge.