- Nabokov describes the mannered English garden at Vyra, its paths, plants, and wildlife.
- But he has lost parts of it to time: "The disintegrating process continues still, in a different sense, for when, nowadays, I attempt to follow in memory the winding paths from one given point to another, I notice with alarm that there are many gaps, due to oblivion or ignorance, akin to the terra-incognita blanks map makers of old used to call 'sleeping beauties.'" (6.6.1)
- Next he describes the fields beyond, and the tiny Pugs moths he found there, hoping for and not finding a new variety.
- As Vladimir gets older, is ten or eleven or twelve, he begins to go further than the English garden, and the field, and the woods. He uses his bicycle to travel miles from the house and goes further and further, hiking whenever he can so as to go slowly enough to notice the details of nature around him.
- In 1910, Vladimir ventures into the local marshes for the first time, passing peasants on his way to a bog. In the bog, he finds all manner of special Arctic butterflies he has never seen before.
- Here, Nabokov takes a moment to speak about his relationship to time: he does not believe in it. Rather, he believes in patterns and echoes. Standing among rare butterflies, he experiences timelessness, a suspension: everything he loves surrounds him.