Butterfly Skies and the Moments In Between
Photo credit: Marielle PG
This past month has been filled with all sorts of moments. To those of you who read my blog regularly and know that none of these moments have included updates, I'm sorry. There is so much reflection to be had, I am sure, in these coming months before my return home. I will do my best to share more.
Life is full of moments that beg reflection, isn't it? It definitely has seemed like it these past few weeks.
Last weekend, a group of friends and I headed to a monarch butterfly reserve nearby. We've been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to go for months now. Piling into an eight-passenger suburban to drive up winding mountain roads felt like a sigh of relief after so much anticipation. I remember living in General Cepeda as a kid, and occasionally witnessing the monarch migration when it came through town. How do you describe the memory of an orange sky, your ten-year-old-self watching with jaw dropped?
I was excited to see something like it again.
I had been thinking about this moment in the moments in between the busy moments of my busy days. In the taxi to and from work. Near the water dispenser before evening classes. In the seconds between laying my head on my pillow, and falling into deep sleep. Anticipation can be a beautiful thing.
At the entrance to the monarch reserve, there are signs warning that the butterflies stay asleep, wings closed, in the case of cold weather—"No refunds." We pushed through the turnstyle and started up the 600 steps that led to an hour-long path. Instead of looking for stray butterflies, ones left behind, I focused on steadying my breath against my out-of-shape body's protest.
I had been thinking about seeing butterflies, among other things, on my bus ride to Mexico City not long before. I have always gotten incredibly car sick. There's not much for me to do in vehicles other than to sit in silence, or visit if I'm travelling with someone.
We finally made it up to the reserve. All of the butterflies clung to the trees, asleep still. At first, I didn't know what I was looking at. They looked like dead leaves, but heavy ones, leaves that weigh down the thick branches of trees. Not the image of orange from my childhood. But it wasn't 10:30 yet. We'd give them some time to start flying.
On the bus trip back from Mexico City, I listened to music. No thoughts, really. Just my favorite sounds. Just the faraway sights of signs and lights that I didn't think too much about. Just the eventual lull into sleep, no thoughts about butterflies to keep me awake.
11:30 and the butterflies still weren't flying. What should we do? Our schedule wouldn't allow us to wait much longer. I had expected for the trees to burst into bright orange as soon as the sun hit them. But they hadn't, and the sun hadn't stayed out for very long. More waiting?
On the road to see the butterflies, with its thousands of potholes and unpainted speed bumps, I kept thinking of how worth it it would be.
11:45, and it still didn't feel quite worth it.
Now, after a makeshift picnic, we made our way back to the butterfly-laden trees. Enough warmth to encourage some of these speckled creatures to wake up. It really was beautiful. Not a whole sky of orange, but hundreds of butterflies flitting between trees. Thousands of butterflies were still sleeping.
With no idea that they were late to the job, the early risers were captured in hundreds of pictures by the hundreds of us below. There was something almost surprising to me about how understated their beauty was after all of the anticipation I had experienced up until this moment. It wasn't disappointing, just surprising.
When compared to the little moments of looking out of taxi windows, which can be beautiful in itself, this moment was something special. Early rising butterflies in the forest are special in a way that orange skies aren't, and vice versa.
In the car back, the butterflies filled my mind, but the road did too. Bald patches on the sides of mountains and near-vertical agricultural fields impressed me. Perhaps this kind of beauty would capture the imagination of others in the way that butterflies capture mine. Perhaps this kind of beauty will intrigue me more the more that I learn to appreciate it. Perhaps I can do a better job of allowing my imagination into the quiet spaces, to inspire reflections like this one.
I will listen to music on buses. Text my friends to catch up. Pick at my uneven nails. As much as I do that, though, I want to be thankful for my carsickness. I want to put my phone away at the cooler, and think about butterflies. I want to look across the street in the line at the ATM, and wonder how and when I will publish my first book on philosophy. I want to walk up mountains on the way to something beautiful, and appreciate the walk, even if my out-of-shapeness makes it hard to do so.
Maybe no anticipation means you'll have less of a chance for disappointment. But maybe it means that it will be easier to be disappointed that this, your one moment of ultra attentiveness, is not as dazzling as you had hoped, when you had set aside enough time for hoping.
Appreciation requires practice, I think. What better moments than those potentially silent ones? The understated ones? I think that maybe if I don't do as much with those moments in between as I do with the butterfly sky moments, I won't be able to fully appreciate either of those moments at all.
"More on beauty, more on wonder, more on presence..." — You, reader, if you've been working through my blog
I can be a slow learner. Love, Alyse
