They knew when to leave

A female biting midge, Culicoides sonorensis, a species otherwise known as ‘‘no-see-ums.’’

“’No-see-um’ was an Indian word – red skin as vulnerable as white. To the early Indian, coming here {in the Maine woods} to make a warm-weather camping trip would have seemed the act of a fool: Thoreau, with his veil, his smoke from rotting logs; we with our Off and our Cutter. When the tribes lived here…they left in the summer. When the blackflies, the mosquitoes, and the no-see-ums hatched, the Indians departed, and did not come back until the bugs were gone.’’

— John McPhee, in The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975)

In a bark canoe in no-see-um land