He was an integral part of my own path, willing to teach me whatever he could about photography, photo editing techniques, book printing, and leading butterfly field trips. Something I didn’t put together until a few years later, is that the insect collection I curated during my undergraduate years at Central Washington University contains many specimens collected by Don Rolfs and Jon Shepard, who attended college together in Yakima. Little did I know when I was organizing all the specimens that I would later meet both men.

I first learned about the Washington Butterfly Association (WBA) in the summer of 2004, while I was interning at the Sinlahekin Wildlife Area. Their annual field meeting was held in nearby Omak that year, and Dale Swedberg (then-manager of the SWA) had heard about it and brought me to the Friday evening gathering. That was the day I met Jonathan Pelham, Bob Hardwick, Dave Nunnallee, and several others. In 2005 and for the next few years, I attended the annual Chumstick Mountain butterfly count, which was usually jointly led by Don Rolfs (taking the Swakane Canyon side) and Dave Nunnallee (Derby Canyon side). On the trip in 2007, when I was riding with Don and expressed an interest in learning digital photography with a SLR camera, he lent me his expensive Canon with a huge macro lens to use for a couple hours, which cemented my desire to dive into macro photography. Later, when I started my multi-year effort to produce the Butterflies of the Sinlahekin Wildlife Area book (published in 2017), Don invited me to spend the day at his home to photograph all the specimens I needed for the book (anything I didn’t already have in my own collection), using my camera and his equipment. It was a very long day; I was under a deadline because Don was in the process of donating his butterfly collection to WSU to make room for his rapidly growing bee collection, but he was a gracious and patient host, and during breaks he taught me several things about photoshop, knowledge I still draw on to this day.

Even though he had almost completely withdrawn from the butterfly community by 2010 (becoming well known in the bee community), he stood by his promise to help lead field trips for the 2010 Lepidopterists’ Society conference in Leavenworth, the first time it had been held in Washington. He led a group to the Chumstick area (east of Leavenworth) while I led a group south over Blewett Pass and up to Red Top Mountain. It was my first time leading a large group like that, but Don guided me through the logistics and we both had very successful days (I think my group beat Don’s by one species).

Another anecdote that people may not be aware of, is that all of the specimen plates in Bob Pyle’s Butterflies of Cascadia (2002) were photographed and created by Don along with David Lee Myers. When Bob and I put together Butter- flies of the Pacific Northwest (2018), I created new specimen plates with “new and improved” techniques that I developed from what Don taught me, and used several of his specimens that I photographed on that day back in 2014.

Don may not have been as widely known as some of our Northwest Lepidopterists, but he was an important part of our history, and I’m thankful to have known him. This photo is one I took with his own camera (the day he let me borrow it) on top of Chumstick Mountain, June 24, 2007.

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