The Butterfly's Demise

Yesterday I took a hike. Pain has been plaguing me for about 3 months. I feel I am no better or closer to being pain free.

I turned around to head back to the car. I strayed off the trail and walked into a clearing which appeared to end at a rhododendron brush. I intentionally skipped it on my way up because I thought it was a dead end. On the way back down, curiosity persuaded me to look. I was wrong. There was a path to the river, so I followed it. 

I settled onto a rock to enjoy the rapid. I inspected my surroundings to check for creepers and/or bears. As I peered around, my eyes were drawn to a flurry of activity. I saw a beautiful, large Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly caught in a plant. She was frantically spinning like a top on the underside of a leaf.

The butterfly's struggle reminded me of one like a child on a tire swing at the playground, as an adult tries to spin her. “Faster! Faster!” she would exclaim. As the tire spins faster and faster, the child’s grip begins to loosen; the centrifugal forces pull on her chest and arms, and panic sets in. Unable to stop the momentum, eventually the child is flung from the tire swing in a spectacle of arms and legs, that most likely ends with no broken bones, but bawling. 

But for the butterfly, there was no release for her. She was stuck in an endless loop of her own making. Her determination to  fight against the leaf that entangled her was becoming her undoing. I watched for a moment as she whirled around, and was horrified to discover that she was literally pulling herself apart. The part of her wing that was caught was getting wound tighter and tighter, and it was ripping her wing. The rip was creeping closer and closer to her center being. The butterfly’s resistance and struggle against the situation she was in was eventually going to be the demise of her. 

Desperate to help, I started to speak in a soothing tone. I reached for her, unsure how to assist but at least wanting to slow down the tearing of her own body. Finally she found purchase on my arm and paused. Relief, if only for a moment! We were both still for a few seconds. And then, as if the silence and lack of movement was all she needed to see her situation more clearly, she began to slowly walk up my arm. The piece of her wing that was twisted in the leaf steadily unwound. When her wing reached the end of the entanglement, there was a little pop as it tore off a small piece. 

She was free, and the butterfly flew away.