How to Lose Yourself

Butterfly House in Missoula in January below freezing

Step through the first door into the antechamber. Wait until that door closes before opening the next. In the pause, notice how the thaw begins. Step into the tropics. Know what it is to bask with wings spread on a fern, to taste papaya on a plate with proboscis probing South American sweetness, and to loft into the misting humid air in this light-filled atrium of blooming flowers and leafy plants twining on strings higher and higher toward the cloudy sky outside the glass.

Such poetry of wings. Two blue morpho butterflies flashing azure iridescence are looping rhyming couplets. An owl moth the size of a child’s hand rests with wings clasped tight. I lean in close to the velvety scales storied in owl eyes, tiger stripes, and rippling stanzas from far away Asia.

A small girl with curly owl-moth-brown hair sits on a rock wall below the waterfalling plants, her eyes round, lips parted, and butterflies haloing above her.

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I dedicate this blog to Jen and Glenn Marangelo who never gave up on their dream of bringing a butterfly house to Missoula. They inspire us all. Find out more here: Missoula Butterfly House & Insectarium.

Note— This is from today’s morning journal and an offering of momentary bliss and peace and unwinding from a deep freeze. I cannot hide from the atrocities, injustices, and all out assault on nature, yet I believe it will be more important than ever to find ways to lose ourselves in beauty, in bliss, in momentary forgetting. And then? We join together, find our voices, and resist, defend, and act. Thanks to my friend Lisa, pictured here, for leading me to tranquility.