Perhaps no one enjoys basking in the sun more than butterflies … there’s that moment, it seems, when the momentariness of their adult life, or the fear of myriad predators queuing up for a morsel, is all forgotten as they spread the wings out over a perch, wallowing in an infinite warmth of the sun that, like the other cold-blooded brethren, they can savour only in the moment… they are beauty, a metaphor for the soul set free as the chrysalis finally gives way, or a metaphysical inquiry into the veil separating dreams from reality, or a postulate on how small things small things in a complex system may have no effect or a massive one, we just don’t know… as they metamorphose, as they pollinate, butterflies are flux, an incessant motion steeped in so much restlessness that it seems like a fever dream…

I’ve always found dark clouded yellows on a clear morning following a cloudy or a rainy day… pretty sure that the actual etymology has another narrative, but this one is mine… there’s one I found getting drunk on dewdrops, and another a pair, flirting about, pun intended, there was one at the edge of a forest swinging nonchalantly on a blade of grass, and another playing hide and seek as one tiptoed behind it for a clear frame… ‘tis a spectrum of oranges and yellows, one’d say a matte finish, the colours sprinkled and not painted… and in the backdrop of these interactions, it has always been a harbinger of better, brighter, drier days as one trudges across the higher climes, leaving the meadows for the moraines or the woods… these are meetings not frequent, once every one or two years maybe, but ‘tis one of those rendezvous that always seems familiar…

Musing on dark clouded yellow butterfly, hiking in Western Himalaya