The Beautiful Ludmilla ~~

The Beautiful Ludmilla ~~

The summer I moved here, I lived in the woods where my house now is. I recommend this, before building on a site. Gives you a certain sense of the way Mother intended it to be in that particular place. Helps to keep you from massively miscalculating: you get a sense of where the sun is throughout the day, where the rain comes from, and the wind, and the views from your future windows. I got to meet the hummingbirds, the ferrydiddles, the ducks, the heron, and one butterfly who consented to be my pet for a couple of weeks, ten years ago.

She never came before noon, and I sensed that my side of the river, under the shade of the mountain, made it too chill before then. But every afternoon she'd come, flit in and out of shadow and sun flicker, and finally settle on the speckled green lid of my cook pot on the cold fire grid. She'd always start on the same side, the North North West, wait a little, walk a few steps, and lower then raise her wings, then lower them again. Meanwhile, I could see the males in the sunny corridors, road and river, patrolling, looking for her. Alas, she liked my lid. Every day, she did the spiral dance up to the handle; steps, wings down up down, steps, repeat, all the way to the top, where she'd repeat the lowering, rising, lowering, rising, and finally fly off. In a few hours, she'd be back for an encore or two.

I didn't know then what she was, and never saw her courted in my dappled halls. I wished her luck with her motherhood. By now she could be the matriarch of 10 generations. She was a spicebush swallowtail, and I always called her The Beautiful Ludmilla.