“The world is too much with us,” wrote William Wordsworth more than two centuries ago.
Wordsworth, who would later spend many years wearing the mantle of England’s poet laureate, complained in verse, “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; – Little we see in Nature that is ours…”
He should only know what we see these days on the morning news: mass shootings, cultist crackpots soiling a major political party, corporate greed, flaws in the delivery of medicine and education, and climate-driven fires and floods “laying waste” vast portions of the world.
Sounds like grist for despondency, and for sure, there are plenty of warning signs for us to read.
Amid all this, though, there’s comfort in knowing that if we can find the will to protect it, plenty in nature can still be ours.
With that in mind, it might lift your spirits to know that Oct. 3 is “National Butterfly and Hummingbird Day.” Yes, that’s an actual thing, although determining who started it, and when, is as elusive as a darting ruby-throat.
Web sites say this is a day for appreciating these brilliant, winged gifts bestowed on us by our good green Earth.
And gifts they truly are. Iridescent hummingbirds so impressed the ancient Mayans that they believed them to be the sun, come to Earth in disguise.
Writers have likened them to flying emeralds and sapphires, and even to tiny, coquettish peacocks.
As for butterflies, their mystical ability to morph from caterpillars has inspired comparisons to human aspiration. The author Dean Jackson once wrote, “When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.”
Regarding hummingbirds, most who spot these improbable, dazzling creatures will relate to the sentiments of English actress Lesley Nicol, who starred in the popular drama series Downton Abbey: “Coming eyeball to eyeball with a hummingbird on my terrace is as exciting to me as any celebrity I’ve met…”
Eyeball to eyeball is precisely how it happens here at Shalom Acres, our little hobby farm in Greenville’s Apple Valley.
Beside the computer that alerts us to every breaking catastrophe is a garden window, against which lean scarlet Mexican sunflowers – magnets for the creatures we shall soon celebrate.
Oblivious to human foibles playing out on a screen just inches away, hummingbirds and butterflies nuzzle the blossoms, sharing nectar in trusting harmony. They reassure us that at least in this small corner of the world, the pulse of nature throbs as always, with a strength gathered from eons.
On a wider scale there’s cause for worry, but in the spirit of “National Butterfly and Hummingbird Day,” I’m going with the positive for now.
The spirit of the coming observance was well expressed in a marketing effort by Papyrus, a greeting card and stationery purveyor that put it this way: “The hummingbird’s delicate grace reminds us that life is rich, beauty is everywhere, every personal connection has meaning and that laughter is life’s sweetest creation.”
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.
