Small Wonders

Canadian Tiger Swallowtail

(Papilio canadensis)

There have not been many swallowtails on the Two Hundred Acre Wood so far this year, and I did a spirited, wobbly dance on the weekend when a single glorious specimen flew past my freckled nose and alighted in a dense thicket of thorny blackberry canes near the trail into the deep woods - in my excitement, I almost dropped the camera.

A few minutes later, a single cicada started to broadcast its call for a mate from somewhere higher on the ridge, then another and another and another. Again and again, its tymbal muscles contracted and relaxed, the vibrations forming notes in what is, to me anyway, summer's most resonant and engaging musical score.  Time stood still as I listened to that poignant and hopeful chorus.

There are moments one remembers in the depths of winter, and this was one of them.  How sweet it was to listen to the season's first cicadas rumble and rasp in the trees over my head, to stand and watch small wonders flutter and swoop through fields on stained glass wings. Life simply doesn't get any better than this, and it doesn't get any wilder either.