Newborn Swallowtails – Photo: L. Weikel

Fresh Start

I think I may have mentioned this feeling yesterday, but once Tropical Storm Isaias moved through our area, the transformation was stunning. Everything felt different; as if we were being given a fresh start. The air, the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the creeks, the gardens – everything was transformed.

Of course, a symbol of transformation is the butterfly. By virtue of its creature story, it embodies the essence of transformation. Starting life out as a caterpillar, it eventually wraps itself in a cocoon, completely dissolves itself into an amorphous goo, and then reconstitutes itself into an entirely new and different creature. One with wings, in fact.

Judging from what I discovered yesterday post-Isaias and witnessed today playing out in our yard, our garden, and in the fields as we walked, it almost seems as if the tropical storm was a catalyst of change. It was almost as if the arrival and fury of that storm initiated any number of cocoons to break open and release those new Beings into the world.

Moth Goddess – Photo: L. Weikel

Butterfly and Moth

The two pictures accompanying this post are of beauties crossing my path – literally – within hours of the storm moving through our area. It was as if the butterflies were breathing a sigh of relief over their release, their rebirth, and they just had to prove to themselves that they could actually do it. They could fly!

Both the Swallowtail and the delicately adorned, pale, butter-colored moth tested their wings, slowly opening and closing them, almost as if they couldn’t quite believe how it felt to both have them and have mastery over them. What purpose they were to serve was an even greater mystery, but somehow they knew it would be something so special that their perceptions of everything would be changed forever.

And they were right.

What if we’re on the brink of having our cocoons broken open as well? Will we learn to fly, too?

Photo: L. Weikel

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