Butterflies Emerge

Summer 2020

My manager posed a question.

“Did you give some consideration to deferring your place on the Masters?”

“Yes, I have.”

She smiled. “And?”

“I’m tendering my resignation.”

The story began three months earlier. Crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, I came round. Aside from a bruised coccyx, something inside me had snapped. Relentless Zoom calls from morning until midnight had finally broken me. Even weekends in lockdown were no longer sacred. I later learnt my breathlessness and subsequent fall were due to contracting COVID.

It was serendipity that I encountered Stephen Moss on a webinar and jumped down a Google rabbit hole to follow him. He offered me the last place on the Masters course on my birthday. I shared my fears with my best friend about leaving the company I’d worked for most of my adult life to pursue a degree in nature writing:

“This has bloody well got your name written all over it! DO IT, DO IT, DO IT!”

So I did. Discarding my old life like a butterfly emerging from its pupa. In a wildflower meadow, I diligently captured field notes for my pre-course homework, admiring my first ever silver-washed fritillary. Tears of joy. This was my new life.