Follow the Butterfly

[Following is an excerpt from something I wrote a couple of years ago.]

It was a large yellow and black butterfly common at the particular time of year and place – not a Tiger Swallowtail, but something similar.  It had touched my arm in one fleeting second as though to say, “Follow me.”  So, I did.  I followed it.

The heat was oppressive in the densely tangled thickets as I made my way over fallen logs and through tangled briar in pursuit of the gossamer-winged insect that stayed just ahead of me.  It was as though it waited for me to bull my way through the foliage of the deep-shaded woods that lay before me.  I was drawn to it as a bee to pollen.

It was merely a six-legged creature of the forest, yet deep within I knew I was deceived by appearance.  There was something more to this wondrous flitting beauty bouncing on the imperceptible air currents of the deepening forest.  Then it was gone.

I froze in my tracks, looking about me for the bright yellow flutter that had led me into the darkness, but it was not to be seen.  Then, as if from a trance, I became aware that I was in a place I had never been before.  I thought I had explored every inch of this forest between the creeks, yet nothing around me seemed familiar.  The dead fall, the tangled briars, the occasional beam of light shining brightly on a trembling leaf – nothing was familiar.  I was in a place I had never been before.

It was no bother, merely a wonder to me.  I knew that with only a small effort and a short hike I could reach the edge in any direction – a fence, a meadow, a wandering stream – I would enter the known in moments if I only struck out but, I waited.  I felt disoriented.  There was enticement in the unknown.  I wanted to remain in this place where the familiar was unfamiliar.

The forest is a noisy place.  The sounds of insects, frogs, birds, the skittering creatures stirring the leaves filled what felt like silence but was never silent.  It was a place where fear could seize but did not. 

I searched for a place to sit and listen.  The crumbling logs encrusted with fantastic arrays of mushrooms, toadstools and various other fungi drew my gaze until I sensed the presence of the tiny slithering insects that filled their rotten core.  There were no rocks, no fresh-fallen timber, only decay and the refuse of fallen leaves and twigs and the occasional scrawny tuft of grass rising from the moldering proto-soil.

I wanted to absorb, to enter into the world around me in ways that I had never done before.  I wanted my senses filled with the odors, sounds, sight and feel of this seemingly primeval place.  I wished to merge with the forest – to make it one with me.

Before me stood an ancient tree, an oak, and its limbs reaching skyward before curving down toward the earth.  Some of the lower limbs touched the rotting forest floor only to curve upward again with a burst of foliage at the tip, reaching for stray sunshine filtering through the scant spaces above.  It was covered by lichens and moss.  The upper foliage obscured the sky but for the occasional space where some damaged limb had come crashing to the ground, only to lie in place until the unseen workers had converted it to soil.