When I review the many hundreds of images stored in our Media Library, I often stop scrolling down at this one. This photo of an Eastern Black Swallowtail? An affirmative one for me.

It buoys me up in so many ways. This is why I get up at 4:30 A.M. and struggle to get out of the house on time, to drive to the morning’s destination, Oh! so hoping that I can cop a winner of an image or two.

This shot reminds me that each and every foray in the bush may bring me face to face with unequaled beauty and wonder.

Then too it tempers my never diminished excitement, ongoing and burning, so many years (decades) into the pursuit of butterflies common and OMG! rare.

I’m brought to a smile, as I consider how the very same fascination I felt when I was a boy, in those disappearing empty ‘lots’ of Brooklyn, New York waxes true now, decades later.

Those hundreds of sceptical looks, after being asked “What do you do [now]?” The resigned looks from family, unable to tell their friends that I now own NYNY real estate, much, as I once did and now photograph not horses, nor grizzlies, nor whales, nor tigers, but  . . . butterflies.

The thrill of the looooong drive to another state, actually finding the habitat sought, and now maybe, maybe meeting a butterfly as shmeksy! as this one here and G-d willing, capturing an image of it, and a good one at that . . . and having Jeffrey, Phyllis, Lauren, Leslie, Cathy, Rose, Jim, Virginia, Barbara Ann, Laurence, Linda, Angela, Melanie, Deepthi, Nancy, Joanne, Marcie, Phil, the Mikes, Jeffrey and Mr. Pyle Comment nicely.

All that and me knowing that G-d has shared with me a bit of the Great Beauty about us.

I smile, for I understand, that more often then some, I am fortunate to be in the State of Awe.

Jeff