A New Friend

Towards the end of the nature and poetry tutorial today, I came upon a little thing, a lovely thing, a caterpillar. It had moved its miniscule body, millimeter by millimeter, up my leg and onto my lap, where it sat on the relative warmth and comfort of my shorts. After an entire hour surrounded by and immersed in nature, this was by far the most striking interaction I had experienced. It was in my initial glance at this caterpillar, the second that it took me to experience and know the caterpillar, that I felt love for it. I wanted it to be safe, to be free, to live as good of a life as a caterpillar can. The interaction with the caterpillar struck me with awe, and swayed me in a way reminiscent of Bouma's first mode of transcendence. Where had this caterpillar been, why was it here, and why had it chosen to take its furry little body and to crawl up my furry little leg? Interactions with nature can be many things, but for me, sitting near the beautiful lake with birds above us and the cast of leaves of trees below us, all became incidental once my new friend the caterpillar had arrived.












[1] Gary D. Bouma, Meaning, Transcendence and Community in Australia, (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1992) 68