BLUEPRINT FOR PERFECTION

THE SKY'S THE LIMIT

 Two summers ago I sat in a canoe at sunset on Anglin Lake in Northern Saskatchewan. The dragonflies had come out of their seventh moulting after four years under water. Thousands & thousands, clad like joyous mardi gras revellers, looping the loop & swooping the swoop. The mosquitoes were abundant. The evening was calm.  Male & female sought each other with kaleidoscopic abandon in their aerial courtship. I sat motionless in my light water craft, my paddle barely stirring the glassy surface of the dark water. Then it came to me. The dragonflies had one interest only - not food, not sunset, not love. They had discovered flight at long last. Three hundred million years in the making, the individual dragonfly rises out of the water. Those gossamer, stained glass wings. The 360 disco ball eyes. That aerodynamic, cantilevered body. Mother Nature, Gaia Herself, ever whimsical, perfected the nature of flight in an ancient, alien form then set it loose. The sky's the limit.