Prologue to Oak Savanna Winds: Willow Pond – Comma Wings and Pond Water
Wildly Personal Book Series by Lisa Loucks-Christenson | March 25, 2026, 11:55 PM CDT

This scene will open Oak Savanna Winds: Willow Pond, the second book in my series following Blue Lupine: a ragged comma butterfly rising from oak leaves under a stand of nettles, while I carry a bucket of water to a tired little pond.

The comma’s wings, mottled orange and brown on top, fold into the perfect impersonation of a dead leaf when closed, broken only by that tiny silver punctuation mark. Once you know to look, it’s impossible to unsee—nature’s editorial note in the margins of the savanna. This one appears right on schedule: about a week after I spotted a banded tussock moth, just as our equinox light begins to stretch the evenings wider.

In Blue Lupine, winter closed around the oak savanna, holding lupine stalks stiff and pond ice solid. Now, at the threshold of Willow Pond, the ice has let go. Pool Pond, though, has paid a price. During the last warm-up, I discovered two dragonfly nymphs, still and spent. They’d made it through the deep cold, only to lose the final stretch.

I won’t know how many others remain alive below the mud. But I do know what I can do. This afternoon I added fresh water, inch by inch, until the pond’s skin thickened into something more forgiving. Willows leaned in on the shoreline, their early buds catching the wind, and I thought of the dragonflies that may yet climb these stems, split their backs, and launch.

As I write and illustrate Willow Pond, these small choices and observations stitch the narrative together: the comma that survives winter, the moth that emerges in June, the nymphs that live or don’t. My Wildly Personal show and column will follow alongside, sharing the same stories in moving image and weekly pages.

Consider this your invitation into the prologue. When you hold Willow Pond in your hands, this will be the first breath you step into: wings, water, and a woman with a bucket, trying to tip the odds just slightly toward life.

Wildly Personal: Oak Winds Carry Butterfly & Dragonfly Stories