Little Blue Butterflies and Cherry Blossom Snow

They say practice makes perfect, and it's true. Musicians practice scales. Artists doodle. Writers... is there a word for the written equivalent of scales and doodles? Anyway, as a form of written doodling, if you will, I thought I'd take all none of you on a little trip down the algae-choked, giardia-infested stream of consciousness that trickles through the muddy swampland of my brain, by way of my more-or-less-daily walk.

Today is a beautiful spring day, the kind of day almost too perfect to be real. The sun is warm, the breeze gentle, the skies blue and the clouds white. I've lived in this neighborhood all my life, and I still love days like this. Coming down the road, I see two hummers chasing each other, cursing each other in Hummerspeak (a language whose vocabulary consists mostly of curses.) Hummingbirds always remind me of home and Mother. Back when we had an antenna, Mom used to call the first male hummer who sat up there to guard the feeders Trilby; somewhere in the back of my mind, every male Rufous hummer is now called Trilby. Since we went to cable and the antenna came down, Mom put up a weathervane with a hummer on it for the Trilbys to sit on. There don't seem to be quite as many of them around as the years pass, though. I wonder if I'm just not noticing them, or if they, like so many creatures, are being pushed out of house and home by my fellow humans' encroachment.

I hit the paved road, recently cleaned, and turn south. Funny, I don't often think in terms of directions other than uphill, downhill, towards town, or away from it. For a long time as a kid, I considered north to be "up" and south "down", because that's how maps were so often oriented; it still seems a bit strange to think of north as a direction downhill. I see white butterflies in the neighbors' garden. The breeze picks up, sending cherry blossom petals drifting from a dying grove of cherry trees above the nearest church; we have three of them on our little road, for reasons I've never understood. The petals remind me of snow, dancing on the warm wind. Looking up at the woodpecker-drilled holes on the snags, my mind starts combining woodpeckers and squirrels, chipmunks and nuthatches, into fantastic critters bound for Skyhaven. Glancing up at the sun, I see a hint of a rainbow-hued halo. Long ago, I read that halos usually meant bad weather, but my own observations rarely support this story; a halo around the sun just means there's a halo around the sun. I'll have to keep an eye out for circumzenithal arcs later; it's the same type of high, crystalline cloud that's responsible for both. If you've never seen one, I encourage looking for them - they're quite spectacular.

I hit the southern end of my walking route, touching the Stop sign as is my custom (to keep myself from turning back when I can just see the sign), and turn north again. I've always liked this shady end of the "loop," so to speak. The trees, the moss, and the ferns always make such beautiful, bright patterns in the sunlight. I've tried photographing them for reference, but it's never the same on film or in pixels. I pass the snowing cherry trees and the base of "my" road, heading downhill past familiar houses and unfamiliar neighbors. The new development continues with its usual slothlike progress. I wanted to be out of the neighborhood before the rich owner went ahead with his plans to bring more cell-phone-yammering, BMW-driving speed demons to what was once a relatively peaceful suburban spur. The little unnamed creek is running; I remember when it used to run year-round, before the same rich guy behind the development put in an illegal holding tank. I wonder what it's like to have the kind of audacity to act first and ask forgiveness later, both resenting and admiring that kind of selfish moxie. A little further on, and I'm passing between a dandelion-strewn field and the llama farm. Llamas are strange creatures, oddly proportioned when one is used to horses (who used to live there.) I should base a Skyhaven critter on a llama someday, just for fun.

Further still, onward and downward. Past the little gray house that's perpetually for rent and the corner field where there used to be a great cottonwood. It's just a stump now, a stump near a dilapidated shed and a mailbox, the latter legacy of someone who thought they'd make a killing buying the saturated little triangle of real estate when the Bypass That Won't Do Anything goes through. I don't think it's going there anymore, if it's going through at all; a vendictive part of me that hates seeing greed rewarded chuckles. A little cornflower-blue butterfly dances across the road. I've never actually seen a cornflower, at least not knowingly, but I grew up with Crayola colors, so I call it cornflower blue. It's the first blue butterfly I've seen this year, the rest being white. Later the tiger swallowtails and painted ladies and others will come, but for now it's just the white and the blue, bits of spring sky given wing.

Down to another Stop sign, a quick tag, then back toward Tiger Mountain, up the little spur-road hill. It passes through a small swampy wetland, thick with willows, snags, and the pungent scent of skunk cabbage. So many people see nothing but bugs, mud, and wasted land in wetlands. People in places like Indonesia, Florida, Louisiana, and New Orleans... people who live in flood plains and wonder why the flooding gets worse year after year as Nature's water holding tanks and storm buffers are drained, cleared, and developed. I've always rather liked our little neighborhood swamps; I wonder how long it'll be before I see houses instead of hummingbirds there, trash instead of tanagers. The sun shines brightly on the water through the trees, reflecting tangled branches and blue skies. Up the shaded hill to a small sign, a random point to tag just to make myself go up another hill. Back down again, past the wetlands and the ditch. Something splashes in the green water; a frog, most likely a bullfrog. Bullfrogs aren't native to the area, brought in by people from Back East who assume that frogs is frogs, mail-ordered as tadpoles for pond decoration or little Billy's science lesson before being dumped in the ditch. They're rapidly driving out native frogs and who knows what else. Someone else's nostalgia threatening my own. Not unlike starlings, though at least they eat the European crane flies. Nobody else really seems to care. I suppose Nature will balance itself in the end, for good or ill.

Up past the hilly meadow, sparkling with many shades of green and dandelion gold. Anyone who thinks grass is all the same has spent too long among suburban lawns and their chemically-induced sterility. I like the many textures of a meadow, from low-growing soft greens to large, shining dark blades. I even like the dandelions. They're actually quite pretty to look at, fuzzy bright shades of yellow-gold against grassy greens, perfect spring colors. Somewhere I heard a story about an old lady with bad vision who called them her "golden coins," who hated it when the lawn mower destroyed the treasure in the yard. I know they're imports, that they're technically weeds, but the line between "weed" and "wildflower" seems rather arbirtary. In this meadow, at least, I call them wildflowers. Looking over Tiger, I see a long rolling wispy cloud, rising and curling like an inverted wave. Again, I wish I were better at photographing clouds, of capturing their shape and depth.

I walk up the hill, past golden-glowing spring green trees, leaves shimmering in the breeze. The people who think trees are green have spent too long standing on those artifical lawns. I wish I could paint with half that vibrancy. Looking to the clouds again, I see the wave has broken, leaving a vague, foamy white smear on the blue sand of the sky. I don't see the sun halo anymore. Part of my mind works on that story, tries to see the characters on a day like this, in a place like this. Would they see bright-chested robins and little brown sparrows skittering in the undergrowth, or something more exotic? My mind plays with recoloring songbirds, adding iridescence, crests, trailing tails.

Once more down the southern spur, through striped and mottled shadows over the gray asphault. Tag the sign, then back home. I take my time climbing the hill to my house. In 30 years, you'd think I'd be used to it, that it would no longer wind me, but it always has and always does. Then back home, to my computer. And here, to write down the blog entry that I was composing in the back of my mind, squeezed in amongst those Skyhaven critters, unpainted pictures, unwritten scenes, and snatches of nostalgia.

No wonder I never get anything done...