Flittering Clouds On Wings

We went to the Detroit Zoo to see, among other things, the butterfly garden. The sun shone on to the blossoming vines that meandered to the domed glass ceiling--vines that were alive with flittering from butterflies the size of postage stamps to those as large as a greeting card envelope. The magical effect these creatures created in every person lifted me. There were toddlers, octogenarians and mentally disabled all looking up in wonder...a crescendo of smiles.

I wondered what it was about butterflies that drew these smiles. Was it the freedom with which they soared? Or was it their natural beauty... effervescent colors and patterns? They're terribly fragile. Is that what endeared them to us all? Or was it their spontaneity...the way they landed for a moment, perhaps opened their wings, then floated away as if seeking some mysterious nectar?

I think, actually, it might have been their willingness to land on an open palm or a soft shoulder as if we were their very best friend. After all, we all need friends and sometimes friendship doesn't come so easily.

Related articles

• How to Attract Butterflies to Your Garden
• Butterflies
• * Butterfly Garden
• Winter Jewels at the Butterfly House

Seeing Through the Mist

Some mornings are so perfect I find myself in a trance. When a mist lays in the lowland where the river runs to and from the pond, it seems as if I have entered a different world.

On this particular recent morning the mist, a fog really, had mingled with the lifting darkness and it was difficult to see what I'd grown accustomed to on these daily wanderings...the river just beyond the path that is beyond the sidewalk that edges the main street into our town; the woods beyond the river that hush my rushing mind even as they protect the river from all but the most persistent. There would be a footbridge leading to the meandering chip trail. Sometimes the heron would be there stalking bluegills in the shallows. East of the footbridge the river would bend and the water would ripple over the pebble bar on the riverbank. But none of this was there that morning.

When the mist falls, when the cumulus fog rolls down from above, I am, for a moment, disconcerted.I want to see what I am accustomed to seeing. I want the world to be as it should be. I want all the answers, all the symmetry and all the order to be just as it always has been. But the mist prevents all this. It forces from me, "What if?"

What if the river has dried up?
What if the bluegills that swim there have shrunk to skeletons on its banks?
What if the heron has gone to a different pond
                   --he has to eat, after all?
What if nothing is as I want it to be?
What if the world I I desire no longer exists? What then?
My heart begins to flutter and my mind swirls.

I jump to conclusions and, in a panic, begin to consider all kinds of possibilities. I will move away. I will find a new pond like the heron has surely done. I will leave my home, uproot my canine family and set out like Thoreau did so many decades ago. Now I am angry that Nature has sparked my wide-awake nightmare.
 
Just as my panic unsettles me to the point where I must find a place to sit down I decide that surely the same mist could just as easily settle over a different pond.

And so I wait until the sun begins to rise in the east and shines its rays through the trees and the mist is no longer an evil, dark forteller of gloom but a magical place wrapped in a gilded softness that, if I were to believe in a heaven, would be heavenly.

The Wind

There will be no photo to accompany this post. How can I capture the wind on film? Short of showing a tornado in the background, the inverted umbrella of a pedestrian or a rack of waves assaulting the shore it is impossible. The wind is invisible and yet its effects on those subjected to its whims can be devastating. What power!

Yesterday, after our balmy morning, the winds reached 30 miles an hour at dusk. If anything can convince the leaves to fall, it is such a wind and yet, many still stubbornly cling. Not just the oak, which can always be counted on as holding a tight fist on its own, but the Norway Maples, the burning bush, the lindens and some beech have yet to give up on summer.

I feel that way too and yet I know, as do these sylvan companions, that the seasons must change. That time must march forward. That schedules and responsibilities must be kept.

Still, like the sparrows that chirp outside my window--invisible for the leaves still clinging, I am happy to have just one more day here. One more moment to fortify myself for what I cannot see but what must eventually come.

Springing Into Fall

       It is a balmy 64 and while the leaves on the ground...their scents of decay wafting up from the earth...tell the true story, the birds tell a different one. Robins warbling, Red-wings whistling and juncos trilling their celebrations of life...as if the warm weather tricks them about what season we are in.

       Some say one ability that distinguishes us from animals is our sense of the future. Coupled with that, of course, is our awareness of time passed. So it is unlikely these birds are anticipating a new spring.

        That these leaves that cling to my dog's damp fur, just as they cling to the earth, will nourish new growth. The cycle of life.

     I don't particularly like Fall. I'm trying to get passed that.

      I'm trying to tell myself to live in the beautiful present that this season offers...the explosions of    earth's colors, the lacy patterns of bare branches, the time it affords to slow that manic summer pace.

      I'm trying to convince myself that every season has so much unappreciated bounty; that they all present opportunities.

          I'm trying to take these opportunities inwardly...to inhale the peace and the wonder they offer and  to make myself a better person for it.

          I see the reflections of the trees on the pond--reflections dappled with bronze and copper leaves. I want my soul to reflect this same beauty, this glorious harmony between it and nature. Reflect it outward in hopes it will trick other birds into thinking Spring has arrived.