Gatsby Starter Default ports problem

🐛 bug report

Preflight Checklist

• I have read the Contributing Guidelines for this project.
• I agree to follow the Code of Conduct that this project
  adheres to.
• I have searched the issue tracker for an issue that matches the one I want
  to file, without success.

Description of the problem

When I create a new gatsby-starter-default (Gatsby's version 5.0.0) after installing another package (GSAP) and fiddling a bit with it the port gets closed and never opens again. Also I get this error in the terminal:
error Gatsby requires Node.js 18.0.0 or higher (you have v14.19.3).

How has this issue affected you? What are you trying to accomplish?

I'm from the GreenSock team, and we're setting up some Get Started examples in various frameworks so users can fork them and post their issues in the GreenSock forums, so basically this doesn't allow us to create such examples. We don't want to rely on the current beta Gatsby template (which actually works great and uses a different version of Gatsby), since it requires being authenticated with GitHub and we don't want to force users to do that.

To Reproduce

Create a new Gatsby Starter Default (not beta) and start adding, removing stuff, like a new page, or content on an existing page. At some point the port will close and will never open again. You'll see a 502 Bad Gateway warning in the preview.

Link to sandbox: link (optional)

Your Environment