Estes Park Trail-Gazette
http://www.eptrail.com/news/2009/mar/20/stanley-hotel-presents-nabokov-columbine/
Stanley Hotel presents ‘Nabokov at the Columbine’
Butterfly expert presents lecture at the Stanley Hotel Saturday
Friday, March 20, 2009
ESTES PARK, Colo. — Long-time Boulder resident and naturalist Janet Chu, instructor and lepidopterist (butterfly expert), will introduce the world of Colorado’s butterflies on Saturday, March 21, at 2 p.m. in the Stanley Hotel Piñon Room. The public is invited to this free 45-minute Estes Park History Rescue Project-sponsored lecture. Free shrimp cocktail and refreshments will be served after the presentation.
Chu will speak about the book, “Nobokov’s Butterflies,” by 20th century author, Vladimir Nabokov, who spent a quiet summer at the Columbine Lodge, near the foot of Longs Peak, in 1947. Exactly when he and his family arrived is unclear, but it is no secret why they were here — to collect butterflies.
Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1899 and died in Switzerland in 1977. He married his wife Vera in Germany in 1925, and they had one son, Dmitri, who was born in 1934.
Dmitri was 13 when the family came out to Estes Park in the summer of 1947. He climbed Longs Peak during this visit, according to an interview he gave to the Rocky Mountain News in February 2001.
Nabokov, besides being a well-known novelist, was also a highly respected lepidopterist (butterfly collector). The butterflies he collected in the Estes Park and Rocky Mountain Park region in 1947, mostly from the family of gossamer-winged butterflies, in particular, a group of butterflies commonly referred to as “blues,” are held in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard.
For more information about the lecture, contact John Meissner, of the Estes Park History Rescue Project, at (970) 232-4145.