Best place to feel like a kid discovering the wonders of nature

Remember those rare Saturdays when you were a kid and Dad announced that everyone should pile into the car, because he was going on an expedition to a Special Place? Well, the Butterfly Place is one of those places. This unassuming-looking building, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, is guaranteed to make you briefly forget the cares of your world. An airy room features exhibits of chrysalises and caterpillars in various stages of development, a show-and-tell bench for kids and grownups alike, and a continuously running 15-minute video explaining the bizarre world of the butterfly. (There's also a gift shop and an outdoor picnic area.) The payoff comes when you go through the doors to the glass butterfly atrium. At any given time, between 400 and 500 adult butterflies, representing about two dozen species, are dipping, soaring, loop-the-looping, slurping nectar, and just resting on fragrant branches of Butterfly Bush and Elfin Herb -- and, if you stand still, on you. One of the most beautiful is the Blue Morpho, a Costa Rican butterfly bigger than a large man's hand. Perched, wings folded, it's a dull brown, but when it takes off it reveals magnificent iridescent blue wings. The Zebra Longwing (so named because it's striped and very long of wing) tends to flutter in groups, banding together against predators. New England's own Mourning Cloak has deep, velvety black wings with yellow edging and is, like New England humans, a hardy soul. He's likely to come out of hibernation in February to hunt for food. Wisely and unlike us, if he doesn't find any, he goes back to sleep.

Butterfly Place, one mile off Route 3, exit 34, 40 miles from Boston in Westford. (978) 392-0955.