Fri, May 15
|Old Town Hall
Forms and Transformation in the Butterfly World
Butterflies are among nature’s most captivating organisms. In this talk, Ryan Shea invites us to slow down and truly observe butterflies: to notice how their shapes and colors shift and transform, and to help us discover a “living understanding of nature.”
Time & Location
May 15, 2026, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Old Town Hall, 9 Main St, West Stockbridge, MA 01266, USA
Guests
About the event
Forms and Transformations in the Butterfly World
Ryan Shea, The Nature Institute
Butterflies are among nature’s most captivating organisms, dazzling us with their colors, patterns, and the remarkable transformation from caterpillar to winged adult. But what can they teach us about the deeper rhythms of the natural world? In this talk, Ryan Shea invites us to slow down and truly observe butterflies: to notice how their shapes and colors shift and transform, and to help us discover a “living understanding of nature.” He draws on an approach to nature observation developed by the German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which asks us to follow what we actually see rather than jump to explanation.
Ryan Shea is a researcher and educator at The Nature Institute in Ghent, New York, where he explores how people can develop a deeper, more meaningful connection with the natural world — with a special focus…