JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Wednesday we visited the Tropical Butterfly House at the Pacific Science Center. I’d wandered through a butterfly display at a zoo a couple years ago and left it unimpressed.

This one was different. Maybe it was me. Who can say. But I know that I could have stayed there for hours, surrounded by tropical flowers and butterflies. Yellows, pinks, reds, browns and blues. The air was warm and moist, the plants green and thick. The girls and I walked around the circle again and again, slowly, savoring the sights, watching each step, as the guards had cautioned us, to ensure we didn’t crush one underfoot. Abigail and Michaela used a chart to identify what we saw. Ones with white and red patches rested on a wall. Delicate white and vermillion waited on a leaf. My favorite butterfly’s wings resembled dirty leaves on the outside, but the insides – visible only during flight – were my favorite shade of blue, a hue somewhere between blue jeans and baby blue. I couldn’t capture that particular butterfly with my camera but here are pictures of a few others….

We wandered in the exhibit, unaware of time (or that our traveling companions had left). I saw flowers shaped like trumpets and flowers shaped like stars and flowers that looked like fireworks. Observers, we danced with dainty steps, on careful tiptoes, eyes darting from ground to sky to tree, performing a butterfly ballet. We oohed and aahed and gasped whenever wings would flutter past us. I didn’t want to leave.

Walking with my daughters amidst the reproduced rainforest I had an epiphany:

Life is good.

Too bad.
These hitchhikers I’d like to take home with me….