In their variety they are in balance with our imagination. Don’t they show as many bursts, tricks, starts, halts, and fires, as much somnolence and surprise in their color, shape, and action as we desire in the exercise of our consciousness? Nature is unbiased in its attention, concentrating equal power on all forms of its expression. When we begin to conceive of nature in terms of creative process--continually evolving, fantastically complex, immensely resourceful--then we recognize our counterparts wherever the sunlight strikes across the air. We share in a communication. Last month I noticed a group of small butterflies on the mauve flower of a milkweed. They were, as I found out, hairstreak butterflies, with a dusky, grayish-lavender coloration, and little orange patches on the lower edge of their wings. When the wings are folded, their hind tips have tails resembling antennae, which may have the effect of a protective device to confuse a predator. After I frightened them off, they returned in a little while to rest on the very same flower. Their color was not the same as a milkweed’s but in tone and value it was close enough so as to hide them from view at a fairly short distance. The flower and the animal were united in a sensitive embodiment of contrast. A few days later I noticed that the flower was gradually paling. Then, on the twenty-fifth of July, the last blossoms dropped off, and the butterflies were gone. An obvious affinity, and a mystery at the same time, of two forms of life in a unique response to nature’s web of motion. It took me a long time to become aware of just how much these affiliations and responses made up the life of earth, how much of an elaboration they amounted to. In the past also, when I saw a robin hop across the lawn, a frog jump into the water, or a tree swallow glide through the air, I reacted with pleasure or disregard--by chance, in other words--without realizing just how big a role chance played in their appearance. In the same sense the obvious upheavals of a season--drought, or heavy rains--meant little to me beyond their immediate, local effect. After a while I began to be aware of all the circumstances that must surround me. One dull day I realized their unlimited context, and thought how slow and agonizing my own changes were in comparison.