At times it can seem that some humans are just born to play the piano or run long distances, but natural talent isn’t limited to beauty or competition, some talent comes in subtler ways.
Take 65-year-old Bryan Pfeiffer, a man born seemingly for the purpose of hunting a little brown butterfly the size of a penny in the bogs of Vermont for 21 years.
Pfeiffer attempted, almost certainly in vain, to communicate what his final accomplishment meant when he wrote in his substack, Chasing Nature, that “Vermont is now a better place for having Bog Elfins—up there in the spruce where they belong.”
If Vermont is a better place for having bog elfins, then Earth is a better place—humanity is in better condition—for having people like Bryan Pfeiffer, who sought this tiny brown insect—not because he was discovering a new species he could name Pfeiffer’s elfin, but merely to confirm that it indeed inhabited his native Vermont; just that, and nothing more.
An entomologist, Pfeiffer has been compiling a butterfly species atlas for the state of Vermont, and he had a hunch that the elusive bog elfin could be found within its borders. The elusive insect dwells up among the high canopy of spruce trees most hours of the day, which has meant 21 years of wading through knee-deep bog water and clouds of biting, swarming insects.
He began his quest for the bog elfin at age 44 when his knees worked and his back was strong. Every year that passed, he told the Boston Globe, he wondered if his window was closing.
Then, after several years of looking in a single bog, he noticed a little brown butterfly coming down from the trees to alight on a juvenile spruce 20 feet from the man, who raised his binoculars and said to himself “I’ve been looking for you, for a very long time.”
But just like that, he couldn’t take a picture before it launched back up into the canopy. There are pine elfins in the bog too, so he couldn’t be sure he had found his prize without a photo. Scouring the rest of the bog in a bit of anxiety, he saw another brown butterfly alight nearby, and he didn’t wait for the optics—he swung his butterfly net, and inside was a bog elfin, the first ever seen in the state of Vermont.
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He took a few pictures and released the insect back into the trees.
In his essay, published on his exceptional substack (he writes with the adoranze of Aldo Leopold at least, John Muir at best) he questions, looking back on his 21-year search, why it mattered so much, and how it’s almost certain to be just a footnote in the scientific record.
Indeed, with the focus paid to the decline of biodiversity, large newspapers are often publishing stories about the loss or recovery of some small colored newt in Asia, or a brown warbler in South America—almost begging the question of what degree of importance they have in the world, and why should we care about them?
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“Here in the United States we protect speech we don’t necessarily care for, or that might lack obvious intrinsic value. It is a foundational doctrine—it makes us stronger, more open to ideas,” writes Pfeiffer.
“In our safeguarding little brown butterflies, like protecting speech, we show reverence not only for the popular and charismatic and profitable, but for the obscure and the vulnerable as well.”
Bravo Pfeiffer, bravo.
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