Going Out

By Ed Wesely

	TRR photo by Ed Wesely Young barn swallows, an hour before fledging from our barn on August 8. (Click for larger image)

Nature programs.  Although summer camps are closing, and practice for fall scholastic sports has begun, there are plenty of opportunities in August to learn about the region’s natural history. I’ve listed two local nature centers that have been hosting programs for a decade or more.

Lacawac Sanctuary. A program that I’m eagerly anticipating—“Rivers, Mountains, and Ice: The Making of the Pocono Landscape”—will be held at the Lacawac Sanctuary, near Lake Wallenpaupack, on Wednesday evening, August 20, at 7:30 p.m.

For information and directions, and/or a complete list programs, visit the Sancutary’s website (www.lacawac.org) and click “events.” Or, call the Sanctuary at 570/689-9494. Janice Poppich, the director, may be reached by email at director@lacawac.org.

The Butterfly Barn. My own nature center in Milanville has scheduled two programs for late August—“The Monarch Butterfly” on Saturday, August 23, and “Star Watch: The Planet Mars” on Friday evening, August 29.

Last week we inaugurated our new website, “From the Butterfly Barn.” Complete program schedules are available there (butterflybarn.org) or by calling 570/729-7053. The email address is info@butterflybarn.org.

Bittersweet days. Last Saturday afternoon, August 9, two minivans parked outside the Butterfly Barn and delivered four young passengers: Maggie, Jamie, Devon, and Devon’s younger brother, Matt.

Within minutes, the kids were scratching goat ears, feeding caterpillars, and tracking two turtles around the herb garden—after aiding three newly hatched monarchs to flee their cages and to flap into nearby trees to dry their wings.

Another fun thing was to feed sugar water to “Flutter,” an injured red spotted purple butterfly, whose picture appeared in TRR’s last issue. As “Flutter” uncoiled his long tongue, which Devon correctly identified as a “proboscis,” the kids remarked it was like drinking lemonade through a straw.

It was also a delight to witness the smiles when I offered each kid a butterfly chrysalis to take home and rear (within hours I’d received an email from Maggie asking how to tell boy monarchs from girls).

But in writing about her own August days, Emily Dickinson remarked that “the second half of joy / is shorter than the first.” Which I felt poignantly on Saturday, when even the lilt of children and young butterflies seemed entwined in a drift toward autumn.

In a couple of mornings, my cat will enter the barnyard unvexed for the first time since April, and a profound stillness will greet us.

And we’ll understand, without looking, that the saucy barn swallows have fled, and that nighthawks will soon be wheeling overhead on their way south.