Yesterday we had the beautiful experience of watching the release of monarch butterflies in our orchard. Most of the small numbers of neighbors along our backcountry road are monarch aficionados. Together we protect the scattered stands of milkweed from being caught by the brushcutter each summer. Monarch chrysalises are cherished and watched over. And wild-flying butterflies sighted receive much exclamation and good wishes for safe journeys.
One of our neighbors at the end of the road gathers caterpillars from milkweed she sees on her travels and raises them in her monarch nursery. Some seven-hundred eggs this year alone, she said, with around a couple hundred butterflies emerging so far. A daughter of hers does similar work in her role as guardian of the monarchs where she lives as well.
It's difficult work. One year when the brushcutter ignored our signage and cut some of the milkweed, our family rescued several caterpillars and did our best to keep them fed and safe.
Only one of our rescued caterpillars made it to the butterfly stage. Predators such as spiders, strong weather, and other factors unknown doubtless contributed to the low survival rate. Or perhaps one out of five isn’t bad. I really don’t know. With two-hundred out of seven-hundred surviving, so far, when raised in a protective manner this year at our neighbors’, perhaps a semi-wild survival rate of one in five is good.
The next year, although from a caterpillar that was not under our care, we were delighted to spot the monarch’s beautiful green, gold-trimmed chrysalis in, of all places, a wild apple tree near our garden. Although I took numerous photos, they never quite captured the full beauty of that delicate shelter.
For countless millennia, these magnificently winged ones blanketed the trees of Central American mountain tops during our northern winter. In our northern summers and early autumn, they’ve delighted us all along the way as they made their mysteriously navigated, intergenerational migration southward. With her bountiful gifts, nature gave them all they needed to weather the threats they faced over these thousands of miles. Butterflies in general have thrived for 175 million years, long before modern humans even made an appearance on the ecological scene.
As we all know, however, lately human threats such as pesticides and herbicides, destruction of monarch habitat, and human-built dangers along their flyways have had alarming impacts on the monarch populations. People like our neighbors and all those who protect and nurture the milkweed, monarchs, and their habitat help counter those threats. The question now is, will it be enough? I certainly hope so.
And, as always, there’s that question that simply fascinates me: how do they do it? How do the monarchs know where to go and how to get there? So often what we don’t understand in terms of animal behavior we label simply, and dismissively, as “instinct.”
Lately, however, scientists have begun to find out that the migratory animals they’ve studied aren’t simply operating on instinct. Their travel routes are learned behavior. How do monarchs know? Whom could they learn it from?
I also wonder how important wildtending is for monarchs – protecting them in their wild homes: the wild milkweed stands. For one thing, the shifting patterns of moonlight, starlight, sunlight and similar navigational aids may all contribute during the chrysalis phase to orienting the monarch “in the womb,” so to speak, and help contribute to their navigational skills as adults. All this is pure speculation, of course, but when we begin to tinker with things, we often don’t realize the serious impacts we can have simply because we do not understand the full picture.
Scientists have begun to talk about the “traditional knowledge” of other animals such as elephants and wolves. When animals lose their wild ways, they lose these ancient understandings and can no longer pass along this gift of skills and wisdom to the successive generations.
Do monarchs have this wild knowledge too? Perhaps they learn from the land and sky even more than from each other.
It seems doing all we can to help them along the way is essential. For one, providing them with protective shelter within our human dwellings if we can.
For another, helping maintain their ways of learning by wildtending those monarchs in protected stands of wild milkweed. In this way, they can live a life as similar to their ancestors as possible.
I find it interesting that down our road we come from a variety of political. economic and religious backgrounds, yet one of the things that unites us all is the monarch butterfly. But it’s really not that surprising. We all share similar rural values about land, family and community, treasuring those winged marvels along with their various guardians as part of our small rural neighborhood.
In fact these feelings here run so deep I think we should change the name of our gravel road to Monarch Lane.
Or perhaps, adding a touch of Anne Shirley, let’s call it Butterfly Way.
Signing off for now from the Wildwood Cabin at 118 Butterfly Way.
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