Mount Hermon | Winged Beauty Butterflies

On March 28th, 2017 I fly El Al back to Israel. Regretably, you will not be sitting on either side of me. I pledge though to search for worthy images, like this one, enjoyed in 2013. to share with you when I return. This ’13 post evoked other memories for me: my youthful things for redheads with green eyes and . . . my time spent in the dressing room of the Rockettes! Butterflies & rare irises can do that to you, connect to extravagant beauty heretofore unthinkable.

Winged Beauty Butterflies

Don’t we all have memories that warm us up when they flash into our consciousness? This image of a Mt. Hermon Iris just did that for me. It brought back memories of a certain moment on a streetcorner in Manhattan (New York, NY), one morning on campus in college, a stand of native Columbine I once had, and sooo much more. Oh, and then there were the magical minutes when as a college-poor messenger, I was given a package to deliver to a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall…and instead of taking it from me, the Rockettes’ staff said, “Yeah, take it in there to her”…into the Rockettes’ dressing room I went…’Nuf said?

This was such an experience. On a trail is northernmost Golan,Israel, near the security fence insuring that Israel and Lebanon stay safely apart, we turned a corner of the trail, and there they were…Iris

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Wonderful! A working image of this rare, protected butterfly on… Mt. Hermon, at Israel’s northernmost border. He was not approachable … until he spotted these groundcover blooms on the mountaintop. So irresistible their aroma must have been, for he sped to these blossoms, and spent precious moments on each, taking in the sugary nectar.

This is another image that I am sharing, taken in June 2008. I had experienced a life-changing personal loss months before, and my daughter had relocated from Washington, D.C. to Tel Aviv. As I planned to visit her, I pushed myself to go for it, do something radical with my camera. Eran Banker was contacted, and off we went from Tel Aviv to … the peak of Mt. Hermon! Quite a few of my photos from Mt. Hermon can be seen here on wingedbeauty. Never, never will I forget that trip. Eagles flying by us as we took the lift to the mountaintop, butterflies like this one, found nowhere else, a landmine (where there were not supposed to be any), OMG! views of Syria and Lebanon, the cattle, grazing 7,000 feet plus on the mountaintop, and the knowledge that we were being watched, surveillance was watching us.

A rare Fritillary this one, flying May through July, on a mountain that you and I cannot visit because of a certain civil WAR, in Syria.

Jeff