It was the summer of tent caterpillars. In early June, you could find them everywhere. Armies of furry green insects feasted on the trees, covered the sidewalks and crawled up the sides of houses in search of more foliage. After coming inside from a trip to the clothesline or a walk to the post-office, you would find them clinging to your clothesÑcreeping ever so slowly up a pant leg, down a sleeve, between your toes, hoping that, just perhaps, they had found a new tree to feast upon. The local news, which borders on parody, ran a feature story on these pests, interviewing one angry old Finnish woman whose caption read "Elma Maki: Caterpillar Hater." But suddenly, when we got accustomed to the squishing sound of their sloppy death beneath our shoes, they were gone. Their cocoons covered the smaller trees, their white cotton-like tents securely nestling between branches. The temptation to poke through them was at times unbearable (I found myself frequently disappointed at what was inside, nothing but a little ball of black goo), yet they were eerily peaceful in comparison to the slimy armies they had earlier formed. This peacefulness brought a sudden realization that a quarter of the trees in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Northern Michigan had been stripped of their leaves. The usual lush hillsides were spotted with barren branches, making it feel as though summer had never really come at all.