Up close and personal
It was hot and sunny and we were walking a walk that I had tried in the last gasps winter but the waymarks simply stopped – trees felled or fallen … it happens. The Bean and I, that day in the snow decided to call it a day, even though it meant a near vertical scramble back down what is in fact the edge of an ancient (no seriously, it’s 10th century ancient) quarry to the car. That had been March. Now in July we determined to find the main event – 10th century cottage remains … their owners driven out by the plague it is thought. The plague – up here where the air is clean …it makes you think! In the hot sunshine this beauteous butterfly did aerobatics thence alighting and sunning its stunning wings and then again making a beeline for my exposed skin and delighting in intruding. It hurt by the way. But I didn’t flinch … such an up close and personal experience with so etherial a creature who would be dead by dawn was an unmissable feast … I hope it was good for flutterby too.
My prompt for this piece was the Weekly Photo Challenge entitled Close Up for which you can find all the other entries here
PS: Shortly after the picture was taken and for the next 2 hours straight as we walked, the heavens opened in a deluge of biblical proportions and we were quite literally drenched to the skin. I wonder about what butterflies do in the rain. Just a ponder. The cottage ruins were worth it incidentally despite the fact that visibility was practically zero. Just walking in a place that was a community a thousand plus years ago and seemingly wiped out in a whisper of invisible venom made me shiver far more than the saturating rain ever could.
The title is swiped from a 1996 movie starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer which I loved and am reminded to seek out again
You have such an evocative turn of phrase, I am visualising the ruins. even with minimal descriptive information. Do yo remember “the stone tape”?
Thank you and my lordy yes I do remember it … I had all but forgotten but it’s come crashing back full throttle!
At the risk of sounding nutty, the theory of buildings absorbing events and playing them back under certain conditions has always felt just about right to me. It explains why certain places can give you the chills..
Doesn’t sound nutty to me at all. I am convinced that this is the case!
splendid image… <3 Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer… love them both! – btw, similar tastes again… 😉
* * *
sendin' you friendly thoughts on the wings of a butterfly that has just sipped some nectar from my front-yard lavender… bonus: Superbus – Butterfly… 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQPNj38WscM
Thank you for the kind words and specially thank you for the butterfly superbonus … RR & MP were dynamite in that film – I need to find a copy! And last but definitively not least … have a glorious love and smiles filled weekend 🙂
Great picture.
It looks like today in dear old Blighty we are getting the biblical rain event of the summer.
And Archie and I are about to walk from the Whitehorse back home. I fear a trifle dampness to us both coming on through the day….. 🙂
That is a lovely walk but do watch out – the chalk gets very slippery, I recall. I’m sure a drenching must be good for the soul at some level though 🙂
A baptism if you like…! Although I am already and angle (yes I know… 😉 ) so why baptism would be required heaven only knows!
I will deffo watch underfoot
Interesting thought about how butterflies cope in the rain. Presumably what is to us a small raindrop must be potentially braining to them. Oh, we need rain here. Last week’s deluge was not enough.
I’m glad you picked up on that Vanessa … it does trouble me a little though there is no reason why it should – they are what they are. But exactly that … a little drop must be a lottle bother to them, I think. As I type I hear the wind building … rather hope it might herald rain and hope if it does that it is heading your way too. Enough’s enough je pense!
Great shot Osyth. “What do butterflies do in the rain” seems like it needs a punchline. Can’t really think of one other than “Wing it”. But your “flutterby” reminds me of how that ends and of my mother who loved the tongue twister that ends “…because it saw the dragon drink the flagon dry.” 🙂
Oh I am glad to remind you of your mum and that is a great tongue twister, let’s face it! I think ‘wing it’ is a totally brilliant response to the question by the by. 🙂