Butterfly Mind

Category: Appalachia

sunbeam heart

April 9th, 2026

Our windows are closed, but I still hear the birds twittering in the dark before the sun rises. Spring is here! My heart radiates when I wake to the sound of birdsong after months of cold silence.

I wish it were warm enough to open the house and let the fresh air in. Soon. Maybe even this afternoon. Definitely tomorrow.

Right now it’s barely above freezing, though. I sit on the love seat in sweatpants and a hoodie. If it were light out, I’d sit in the chair by the window. That seat sat vacant most of the winter, but now that the grass is a lush emerald carpet, and new ruby growth sprouts on the rose bushes, and now that I’ve filled the bird baths for blue jays and sparrows and doves to splash around in, I find myself sitting by the window once again during the light of day. I especially like to sit there in the late afternoon, after work. That’s usually when the birds like to duck in the bath and shake the water off their wings, over and over again.

This past weekend, I filled our flower baskets, so now I can watch those from the chair by the window, too. Out front I bought fresh coconut liners for the narrow baskets that hang from the railing on the stair landings. I filled them with fresh soil and stuffed them full of variegated vinca vine, purple kale, and tangerine violas whose delicate petals quiver in the mountain breezes.

On the back porch, I planted another narrow basket with garnet snapdragons and yellow pansies with wine dark centers, and I filled a hanging basket with as many velvety burgundy pansies as I could pack in it, along with vinca vines that will hopefully cascade gracefully over the sides when they get big enough.

I sit at the table by the sliding glass door at lunch and watch the flowers. They reach for the sun and flutter when the air moves. Birds land in the hanging basket and pull coconut fibers for their nests.

The world outside is so fresh and tender right now. Sky blue, spring green. New leaves are young and chartreuse and unmarred. Dew glitters like diamonds on blades of grass.
Now we wait

January 23rd, 2026

Over the holidays, when I worked most days and my team encouraged me to take time off, I promised them and myself that I’d take a day off in January instead. Today is that day.

Today is also a day that an epic winter storm is bearing down on us, though you’d never know from the sunny sky. For my day off, I’d planned to swim at 7am instead of 5:30, and then to toodle around our tiny downtown. Get some coffee. Walk to the book store. Then go home and relax on the new love seat with a book, or maybe, if I’m lucky, thanks to our son who gave me a subscription for Christmas, with the latest issue of The New Yorker if it lands in our mailbox today. I hope I have it in hand when the weather arrives.

And I did all of those morning things. I just inserted a few other things as well. Like find all of our power banks and charge them. Dust off the camp stove, test if it still works, buy fuel. Stock up on cat food, bring in firewood, wash and dry clothes, grind coffee (I still need to do this one). Marvel at the line out the door at the hardware store for snow shovels, salt, and generators. Consider what’s sold out at the grocery store: water, tortilla chips, yogurt. Hope we have enough food and firewood if we lose power, and our whole region loses power, and we have to go several days with high temperatures in the teens and no heat or range or oven or hot water.

It’s strange knowing this storm is coming and then also just going about my regular day. It’s so pretty out! I added a couple of walking stops on my little morning jaunt from the coffee shop to the book store. Our CEO gave us homework this week to go to a museum. At first I thought, We don’t have a museum in town. How will I do this?

Then I remembered the performing arts center sometimes has exhibits, and there’s a historic house in town that’s been converted into a local history museum that sometimes has art.

After I drank my coffee with the paper — an actual newspaper! I pick them up sometimes now after reading Beth Macy’s Paper Girl — I bundled up and began my walk to the other side of town where the book store is. I stopped in the performing arts center, but it was between exhibits, so I just appreciated the architecture for a few minutes, and the airy space full of light.

Next I stopped at the Alexander Black House. I’ve passed this building at least a thousand times in the however many years we’ve lived here.

14. That’s how many years.

Anyway, this house is unusual for this town — the architecture is unlike anything else here — and at least half of those thousand times that I’ve passed it, I’ve thought, I wonder what it’s like in there? Well today I found out because I went in.

Alexander Black House

Inside, a local high school exhibited artwork — photographs, block prints, paintings — and I loved putting the pieces together of “They must have had an assignment about eyes” and seeing the different interpretations from these creative minds.

My favorite part of the museum was a room restored to look like it would have in the early 1900s when it was lived in. Look at the wallpaper! I just love it. Someone should bring wallpaper back.

Wallpaper, dado rail, and wainscoting

Now I’m back home with a blanket on my lap, a hot cup of orange tea, and the sun shining through the window. Our forecast has gone from a prediction of 2 feet of snow to now just 4-9 inches, but of snow, sleet, and ice. The latter will be heavy and treacherous. We don’t need to drive, thankfully, but the weight of ice is bad news for downed power lines.

I want to bring in just a little more firewood, then cover the woodpile with a tarp. I’m hoping all these preparations won’t been necessary. It’s really not fun to lose electricity in subarctic temperatures. My favorite part of every day in winter is climbing into our warm bed after turning on our heated mattress pad. It’s so luxurious to preheat the sheets! We can’t do that without power. We can pull camp mattresses and sleeping bags next to the fireplace though.

Daily writing prompt
Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.
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Walking

May 23rd, 2025

Wind blows through the treetops so they bend and sway, slowly, as if underwater. It breathes out, lips pursed, blowing a whoosh of air above me so the trees swish and rush. The surface of the pond moves as if a current runs through it. Ripples race across its skin. Canada geese are blown along with the rippling, their feathered egg bodies and black curved necks racing like boats in a regatta.

The air is chilly; my only exposed skin is on my hands and face. I wear a jacket, baseball cap, and long pants to cover everything else. Sound and touch are my active senses right now — cold skin, neck hairs tickling in the wind, ears full of the rushing of leaves papering against each other, the forlorn sound of a goose honk, the twitter of birds in the trees behind and above me. A duck just waddled under the round stone table I’m writing on.

The sun has come out from a cloud and shines dappled buttery light on my page. My hand casts a strong shadow from the light that shines behind. The light feels like warm honey on my back. A male mallard sits in a spot of sunlight under the canopy of the giant oak above us both. Its emerald head is tucked under its wing. Its feathers flutter in the wind.

A big gust is blowing through now. The shadows of the tree’s leaves race across the table, my pages fly up, my body chills. Wind hisses across my ears. Across the pond, weeping willow tendrils swing like heavy green hair that almost sweeps the water.

Green surrounds me. Green grass in this glade. Green trees above me. Green moss on the low stone wall behind. Willows, oaks, azaleas, ivy, magnolias, dogwoods. A bike bell dings. The sky is a clear blue against the emerald of the earth.

I am at the duck pond on campus. I loaded my backpack today with notebooks and a camera, water bottle and a package to ship, and I turned onto Glade Road when I emerged from the neighborhood instead of going straight down Meadowbrook Drive like I normally do. I walked to the post office to drop off my package. I walked to the botanical garden.

Walking is such a simple pleasure. It requires nothing — no jersey or special shoes, no fuel, no keys or helmet, no vehicle, no constructed facility like a pool. Yet it gives everything: fresh air, physicality, sunlight, wind, rain, leaves rustling, ducks waddling, Canada geese clustering in the corner of the pond the wind blew them all into. A feeling of being part of the world.

Maid in the mud garden sprite at Hahn Horticultural Garden

Daily writing prompt
Describe one simple thing you do that brings joy to your life.
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Spring in a convertible

April 1st, 2025

We put the top down and drive 55 on Lee Highway to Roanoke. White flowering trees decorate the ribbon of road in cones of cottony blooms. Forsythia erupt in saffron tangles.

Halfway to Salem, where the road is fringed more with forest than farms, the white blossoms fade away. They are replaced with the fuscia-nubbed stems of redbuds. I first see one or two peeps of pink blossoms amongst the naked brown trees of the wood. Then dozens. Scores. I see swaths of hot pink.

We’re out of the woods and back into farmland. Here’s a weeping willow with tender new leaves — the first spring green. Chartreuse strands sweep the ground, like a gnarled crone in a fairy tale, hunched over a pond. So many trees are leafing out as we come down the mountain! Here’s a magenta tulip magnolia opening its apple sized blossoms. Here’s a hedge of golden forsythia, taller than me, wide as a Volkswagen, and spraying strands of gold like firework trails along the full length of the property line. Here are tidy gold mounds of the same shrub, trimmed into bright globes at the entrance to a school.

Now the pale pink of cherry blossoms, presented on delicate airy branches, lifted to the sky, like gifts in the palm of the tree’s hand.

I sneeze from the pollen. Wisps of hair at my ears and neck — the strands that have come loose from my hat — whip in the wind. My husband taps his fingers on the gear shift in time with the music.

We bought a convertible Mazda Miata a couple of years ago, and it is an endless source of joy.

Daily writing prompt
Describe one positive change you have made in your life.
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Frozen waterfall

January 26th, 2025

Temperatures have stayed below freezing for multiple weeks. Most nights last week were in the single digits, with highs in the teens when the sun was up. My husband texted during the week, do you want to hike the Cascades Saturday morning? I want to see it after all this cold.

When we pulled up to the trailhead at 10 am, the thermometer still below freezing but at least in the 20s instead of the teens, the parking lot was full of cars. Everyone in town wants to see the frozen Cascades.

It snowed and sleeted here a couple of weeks ago, and plenty of people have hiked to the falls since. The trail was slippery and treacherous as a result. The snow was packed tight from all the footsteps, and we had to use hands, feet, and butts to make our way without breaking any bones or falling into the frigid stream. On several short descents, we got down to the ground and used the path like a slide. About a hundred times, I thought, I wish I had a hiking stick. That, and hand warmers.

But oh my God, was it worth it. I really struggle photographing snow, and I could barely manage my camera because my hands were ice cubes, so my photos don’t do it justice. And of course, pictures don’t capture the hollow percussive sound of the stream glooping against the crust of ice above it, or the glitter of sunlight on the snow when the trail broke out of the shadows. They don’t capture the sounds of the college kids’ laughter as they slid on sneakered feet and bowled icicles on the frozen pool at the base of the waterfall, or the smell of cold forest air along an icy mountain stream. But they do capture some of the pretty shapes created by shadows, water, ice, and snow.

Stream from above on a trail bridge

So smooth!

The first hint of sunlight

Stream under ice

I love this rock and its shadow

Cool blue

Ice palace

On the waterfall pool

For comparison, here is this same hike in a non-frozen January and in spring.
In the woods

November 3rd, 2024

Fall has arrived, and I am happy. We went south to North Carolina yesterday; the leaves are almost done here in Blacksburg, and we hadn’t gone for a single hike yet. We didn’t want to miss our chance to soak up the warm glow of a jewel toned forest.

We arrived at noon, which is much later than we typically hike, and the parking lot at Hanging Rock State Park was full. Cars circled at a crawl, rolling down windows to ask anyone on foot and near a parked car, “Are you leaving?” We joined the circling line, eventually found a spot, then got in another line to use the bathroom before heading to the trails.

Once we were in the forest, leaves crunched underfoot. My chest swelled with contentment as I listened to them scrape and scuttle. In a sunny spot near the lake, the air bloomed with the aroma of warm pine straw. I inhaled deeply to take in the scent. Here, the trail felt soft with the fallen needles of evergreens, now golden brown.

The light was strong and contrasty, and I wasn’t confident I’d be able to get any good photographs. It occurred to me that maybe black and white would work well in these conditions, so I had fun breaking out of my regular habits to try to look for light rather than color. Instead of looking for red maple leaves or golden beeches, I found myself examining stone instead, and how pretty it looked in the light.

The stone looked pretty in color, too, especially covered in lichen, coppery leaves, and golden November sun, or set against the colorful autumn treetops beneath it.

On our way down from one of the peaks, two outdoorsy college-aged women with braids down their backs passed us on their way up. They looked happy and healthy, one with her knee taped from athletic strain. In their wake, I smelled coconut, like summer at the beach. Like our daughter’s favorite sunscreen. My heart swelled again as I thought of her away in college in Florida, having fun with her friends, even if their activities are swimming and river-tubing instead of hiking.

The trails were more crowded than we’re used to — we forgot it’d be crowded midday, we’re so used to hiking right after the sun comes up and nobody is around — but I liked to see so many people out enjoying nature. I think I’ll go for another walk now while the sky is blue and a few remaining trees gleam ruby.