Did you know that some butterflies migrate up to 4000 kilometres? This is amazing for a creature that seems to flitter, flutter and flap erratically without apparent direction. A group of skippers a type of butterfly can fly more than 50 kilometres per hour.

Who would have guessed a butterfly could fly so fast or so far?

I’m idling my time, watching butterflies while sitting on the edge of the Jurassic cliffs in the headlands of Narawntapu National Park in northern Tasmania. It’s a clear summer morning, the butterflies are drifting around me, and below my dangling feet the deep aqua blue waters of Bass Strait are heaving with life. I would rather be nowhere else.

While my purpose here this morning is to appreciate butterflies, I am diverted to watching a fur seal chase a school of shiny jack mackerel. The waters that I look down upon are so transparent that I can see the hunt clearly, the seal chasing the lightening-fast fish in darting circles and dives. The Australian fur seal is the world’s fourth-rarest seal species, but you wouldn’t know it by this one, as she seems entirely relaxed, apparently in fear of no foe.

While a butterfly pauses to warm its wings in the morning sun on the dolerite next to me, I give the seal more attention. The seal is remarkably agile and swift. For something so big and cumbersome on land, in its element this predator is as fluid as a ballet dancer, effortlessly turning, twisting and diving after its fleeing breakfast. Indeed it seems a bit of a dance between the seal and the mackerel, and I have the feeling that the fish are toying with the seal, teasing it as the clouds of silver and dark green turn this way and that in perfect unison. I also get the feeling the seal is enjoying the chase and it doesn’t seem in any rush, as, so the seal may reason, there are plenty of fish in the sea.

I turn my head back to the terrestrial wonders around me. The butterfly I am watching is a brown butterfly from the Nymphalidae family, wanderers known for their wide-ranging migrations. There are 14 species within this family in Tasmania and they can be found all over the island from Cradle Mountain to the Midlands to our coasts. I am told at least 10 of these species can be seen at Narawntapu, and these never wander far, for all their habitat needs are satisfied locally. These wanderers are happy to be home bodies here.

I’ve never focused much on butterflies, as it is so easy to focus on Tasmanian icons such as mountains, wombats, devils and forests. I am a beginner when it comes to these fragile flying things and the learning is pleasure.

Like the seal, the Nymphalidae seem in no rush this morning. One circles and dances around me, teasing me with glimpses of fluorescent wings flapping in an ungainly but perfectly effective manner. I only catch glimpses of the blended colours and details of its wings, for it never stops long enough for me to analyse it. I begin to think of the butterflies as Monet-like creatures, as I only get impressions of their designs and colours, their tie-dyed wings of brown and orange and yellow bleeding into each other. The impressions are hypnotic.

I am trying to hear the butterfly too, for I know it must make some sound as it flaps its way through the bush. But I am deaf to its music. To fully interpret the natural world one has to learn how to close one’s eyes to read and listen in an entirely different way; one has to learn how to dream with the butterflies.

. . .

I am glad there are no metal signs here on the bluff telling me what I am looking at and interpreting the scene for me. There are no apps that I want to open, no podcasts about butterflies or seals or fish that I want to download. I am downloading directly without an intermediary and I think this best. I can do my research later, but when we are in the bush, on a niche hunt, it is best to use all of one’s senses to take in the scene holistically and not be distracted by technology.

Initially it is important to experience the poetry of nature, the beauty that is between the facts, figures and insights that science can later provide. One must drift into the dream world of the natural world without the mind intruding.

I always look for the poetry first, so as to feel the spirit of a place. It is important to see the unseen and hear the unheard if we really want to know our surroundings. This is not easy. We only see the outline of nature if we just use our brains and keep our science hats on. Combine the insights of poetry with the science of observation, and the wholeness of nature will emerge in a way that will inspire forever.

As I dream with the butterfly and close my eyes to try to hear it, I find it difficult to turn my mind off. We are conditioned to feed our brains with knowledge, statistics and stimulus; we live in the age of infotainment where we have become accustomed to be entertained, to look for signs, to listen with headphones, to watch re-enactments, to be funnelled to visitor centres so as to have the natural world explained for us. All of these additives are fine, but I have found a simple walk in nature, unencumbered by technology, a wander to wonder and marvel at the bush in childlike innocence, is preferable, and leaves a much deeper impression than facts. Science can complement the experience later, but one should learn the art of wandering blind first.

It feels good to feed the spirit and to suspend reason for a while as I experience this Nymphalidae and feel the cool of the sea breathing onto the warm land.

. . .

What do butterflies do all day? While we surrender to hours online, they are out there dancing to music we cannot hear, or have lost the ability to hear. My lifetime goal is to hear this music again. I am listening long at Narawntapu. What songs the Aboriginal people here must have heard and sung!

If I only knew how to sense and see the songlines that guide Nymphalidae across Tasmania. What a picture it would make, once we could see. But we are now distracted by text chatter and hotlinks that have taken us ever further from the songs of the earth. Once the natural world was our home, now it is a place to “visit” and “experience”, a place to catch a glimpse of what we have lost.

But what was lost can be found. Come sit in the bush, above the edge of the sea, the edge of reason; listen to the wind sluice through the casuarinas and hear the seal below snorting and bellowing as it takes deep breathes in search of its tucker. Listen for the butterfly’s wings flapping, silently clapping, and try to hear the dreamtime songs of our ancient land.

I open my eyes and there is a new scene to behold. Across the placid skin of the sea, as if from a David Attenborough script, I can see a dozen or so dolphins sliding through the water, cutting across the blue-green bay from Port Sorrell, chasing schools of mackerel. The dolphins, like the seal, don’t seem in a hurry. They seem to enjoy leaping and dancing through the water, like there are indeed plenty of fish to go around. I’m so distracted by the dolphins that I lose touch with my butterfly. He or she is gone. But there’s another over there near a banksia, and so I follow it for a while.

The butterfly asks nothing of me as it flits about like a firefly. I love to come to the bush because no-one is trying to sell me anything. The “hawking and the hammering” of the city world which the nature writer Barry Lopez talks about is far away. There is no advertising on the wings of a butterfly. Yet.

There is no-one here this morning, not a soul, not a fisherman, not a ranger, nothing but the wind and the elements, nothing but the limits of my own perception.

What is remarkable is that this national park is only walking distance from a beach-side hamlet, less than an hour from a city of 60,000 people. It is a quiet achiever. Other parks have their tourist buses and wow factor, but here there are just paths and empty beaches. A few locals visit this end of the park, but tourists know it not. For now, on this bluff, it is just me and my butterfly mates.

. . .

Why should we care about butterflies? You might as well ask why should we should care about Monet or music, for without these things our lives are reduced in meaning, impoverished and pared to function rather than flourish. But even beyond our human needs for understanding and connection, the butterfly, like all of the natural world now, is in our care; we are the custodians of the planet and it is our responsibility to see that butterflies flourish for their own sake, regardless of our wants and needs. They were here before us, and it is our duty to ensure they have the opportunity to outlive (and perhaps outsmart us) in the long run.

Some Tasmanian butterflies are, not surprisingly, threatened due to habitat loss, land clearing, fire, climate change – the usual litany of bad and sad environmental news we hear so much about that after a while we stop listening. I wonder sometimes if too much bad news disempowers and overwhelms us, leaving us stunned. So this morning I prefer to focus on the good, the beautiful and the magical, as this is always empowering, and inevitably this is the fuel to fill our reservoirs for long-term action and conviction.

What is this sound? Initially it is silence. But within that silence are all the songs of the world. One just has to learn how to listen. I am a beginner, but I am trying. And what little I have heard is intoxicating. With closed eyes I hear snippets of Stravinsky and stray melodies of Mozart and Bach drifting across the landscape.

Author’s note: Years ago I studied natural history at university and our teacher, Professor Norris, used to make everyone in the class go on a “niche hunt”. This involved choosing a species – a bird, lizard, spider or whatever – and then watching that species, alone, for as long as one could – days, if possible. The goal of a niche hunt was simply to observe a creature, write down one’s observations and reflect on those observations. It is amazing how much one learns about life, and about oneself, if one sits with a salamander or a wren for a day. That process has stayed with me for the rest of my life. I have been niche hunting for decades.

This article was first published in issue 84 of Forty South magazine. 

Don Defenderfer is a native of San Francisco who once went on a holiday to Alaska where he met an Australian who told him to visit Tasmania. So he did, and while here he met a woman. That was 30 years ago. He was state coordinator for Landcare Tasmania for many years, a job that allowed him to be inspired by not only the beauty of the Tasmanian landscape but by the many people that are trying to repair and renew it. He has a Masters Degree in Social Ecology and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies with a minor in writing. He has published three volumes of poetry, and his work has appeared in newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times and The Australian.