For more than two decades, I’ve often sung to myself, in Wildlife Management Areas, State Parks, Sylvan Reserves and in the Galilee and Golan in the HolyLand (Israel). The song was usually semi-melancholy, “Lonely Boy,” the smash hit sung by Paul Anka. It goes like this: “I’m just a lonely boy, Lonely and blue, I’m all alone, With nothin’ to do. I’ve got everything, You could think of, But all I want . . . .”

I had love in those early years, but I was slow singing the loneliness I felt on those trails, looking for butterflies, alone, always alone. I Loved (capital ‘L’) my butterfly field work, but, at times it was bone-chillingly lonely. I sing less often these last years, and there have been times when I went afield with Virginia, Jerry & Rose, Barbara Ann, Angela, Cathy, Mike, and Erica. But building my slide library collection usually has me going off alone.

This full week, at the end of December 2017, was a Big Change, for it was the first time in my life that I was ever amongst people who were also very, very interested in finding and watching and photographing butterflies. We were all at the ‘Wall’ ( see my post of the White Peacock Butterfly ), excited about the Tropical Greenstreak Butterfly that was nectaring in those yellow-flowering shrubs.

You must know that with a single exception, I did not hit it off with anyone there. I even stopped offering my ‘business’ card, for our wavelengths never matched, me and them? I sit here now, imagining how it would be if I were out working the trails with Peggy, Leslie, Linda, Deepthi, Curt, Lois, Joanne, Patti, Nancy, Marcie, Kelly and . . . you.

Jeff