It makes my hikes and mountain bike rides so much more tasty and multi-dimensional. Besides, do really want me to rhapsodize about how some place or other is 'breathtakingly beautiful?' (Don't you just hate that phrase?)
In any melodrama there has to be a villain, like the banker with the curly mustache who ties the widow to a railroad track. There must be worries and suffering, roller-coasters of good luck and bad, surprises, and the gushiest sentimentality. Finally there has to be a happy ending.
Without any exaggeration I hate forests, dark and drear'. Sometimes I stumble into them anyway. I become more miserable with every step. And then there's a gap in the forest canopy.
The sun is the stage-lighting for a small stage on the forest floor where flowers and bugs run riot. The star of the show is that terpsichorean wing-artist, the butterfly, or La Mariposa in Spanish. She flamingo-dances on stage while the aspen trees clap their leaves in approval.
One day there were at least eight different types of butterflies within a few feet of me. They have a gift for alighting on a plant and tricking you into readying your camera. Then they flit off, coquettishly.
How sentient they can be, how playful and curious! When you first encounter them you see only fluttering wings of color. They don't really seem like an animal at all. But if you sneak up on one and catch it napping you realize with horror that it is a bug!
