Darner #14: Right Place at the Right Time

Hmmm, a few moments too
soon, a few too late, sometimes makes all the difference.

There are in the
neighbourhood of 20 members of the Darner
dragonfly family that can be found in this neck of the woods. I have been
fortunate enough to identify 14 in my summer rambles. It is quite likely that
some of the remaining 6 have crossed my path. Darners fly far more often than they perch, so many I see go
buzzing by remain unidentified.

I may owe it to my wonky
back that I added number 14 to the list this week. I could only manage an hour
and a half on the hunt that day and had to forgo my usual off-trail, kicking
through the long grass forays. Timing was such that I arrived at the right spot
at the right time, on the semi-open woodland trail, to catch the Mottled Darner shown above perched on a
tree trunk.

I knew quite quickly, by
the incised and hooked thoracic stripe, that it was one I had not set eyes on
before. Back home, nursing my sore back, I went searching through “Dragonflies
and Damselflies of the East” (a weighty tome too bulky to take into the field)
and made the identification.

And so, this Mottled Darner became a random act of
metaphor for the reality that timing is often everything in life. A few moments
too soon, a few too late, and the moment of delight would have gone wanting.

Good reason to slow down
and let life happen in its own time and be there to bear witness.

~  Now Available Online
from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of
Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also
the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which
was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s
website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me Go
Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing
are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the
right sidebar. If
you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly
to my page for postings once a week.