On a Sunday afternoon in late September, I sailed from the Choptank River into the Chesapeake Bay. The breeze kept me nicely underway. In an hour the wind stopped. I was becalmed just south of Blackwalnut Point. I saw a butterfly overhead.
She darted away and, in a moment, was gone. Another flew by, and still others. I saw at least three or four in flight. Their wings were more colorful than any sailboat’s spinnaker that I’d ever seen. They soared high, wing on wing, all sheets flying. I couldn’t take my eyes from them. They were monarch butterflies.
They’d reach heights half again as high as the mast, exerting short nervous flutters of their wings. Abruptly freezing all motion, the monarchs glided downwards as smoothly as milkweed seeds slide on a zephyr. They headed southwest. I was witnessing an extraordinary odyssey in which monarch butterflies fulfill their destiny, a journey beginning as far north as Canada and extending as far south as Mexico and Florida.
Following one’s destiny is a serious business. Monarch butterflies have more than two thousand miles to travel. With wings as thin as an onion’s skin, and with bodies smaller than the circumference of a reed stalk, they must face a continent of storms and predators. But they remain as capricious as monkeys, diving and darting erratically, like children clowning on a playground. Despite the hazards, they seemed enjoying every minute of it.
Physicist, Brian Swimme, believes that our human destiny is a very particular one. “The earth,” he says, “awakens through the human mind . . . our self- reflexive nature provides the space in which the universe feels its stupendous beauty.” I like the thought that my consciousness might celebrate the creation, and offer it space to showcase its splendor.
I watched several butterflies dart, staccato-like, one over the other, as if they’re playing leapfrog. I think that this frolicking must be monarchs in love. In any case, they are, to a butterfly, in high spirits. The sky overhead was blue and cloudless, and the sunlight was brilliant. As the little gliders passed high overhead, the sun illuminated the orange and the deep black scrollwork of their wings the way I’ve seen light rays kindle the colors of stained-glass windows; butterflies transformed from their chrysalises into radiant filaments of color, visible in the day, glowing as if they were Tiffany lamps. It’s a long trip ahead for them. A lot can happen. But they follow their destiny with pizzazz. If they knew the enormity of their task ahead they might not go. God, however, arranged for monarch butterflies to function on a need to know basis. They live each moment as though that’s all there is.
What must it be like, to be fully conscious, lost in the now?
I went to a concert once and the soloist, a violinist, played Mozart’s Violin Concerto in G major. As the virtuoso played his solo, like the butterfly, he took sharp and surprising turns around the score, but only to return again and again to its main theme. For all the excursions, he knew where he was going. I sat close enough to the stage to see his face. His eyes were often closed and his fingers, surprisingly small and pudgy, moved with liquid smoothness along the fret. His face, like an infant’s, would suddenly grimace if he were in pain. Then he’d suddenly smile, inexplicably. His body and soul fused with the violin and its music to become a single entity. It was the consciousness of dreams, the weaving together of soul-fragments to produce a greater whole. In his case, it was a deeper consciousness of the nature of sound. For that moment he was fully conscious in his destiny as a musician. I don’t imagine he gave the audience one thought. I’ll bet it’s like that for butterflies on their way to Mexico. Without a second thought, they just go for it.
It’s exhilarating, living out one’s destiny and monarchs like to show off as they do. A few, like tiny barnstormers, make short steep dives down to the water, leveling out only inches above it. I fear one will accidentally crash into the water. I never once saw a Monarch butterfly ditch herself in the Bay. They know their limits.
The monarch butterfly is more than just pretty wings. She’s a consummate survivor and stays alive by snookering her enemies. She leads would-be predators to think she tastes vile and that she’s poison, not unlike the way vulnerable youngsters wear black coats, sport gothic tattoos and wear nose rings to signal others that they’re ‘bad.’ The monarchs’ colors are similar to other insects that are lethal to their predators. The discriminating diner, typically some bird, recoils from the very characteristics that you and I find so alluring, the monarch’s radiant colors and graphic designs. The florid attributes warn would-be gourmets that while she may look like a tempting dish, don’t go for the monarch butterfly. Survival, for these butterflies, is as much a matter of taste as it is keeping up appearances. For monarchs, dress codes are strictly functional.
As I watched the tiny adventurers in flight, the time slid by me as unnoticed as the still air. Some primal force as ancient as life itself is guiding the monarchs, and seeing one after the other pass me by in the stillness of the afternoon, their destiny became mine or perhaps mine became theirs. My destiny included bearing witness to them. Why would God assign such a hazardous journey to these willing but vulnerable creatures? Why would God place me into a world only to remain conscious of it, that in my awareness I would provide ” . . . the space in which the universe feels its stupendous beauty.” The day of the Monarchs became a meditation for me: it was enough to watch them and be enthralled.
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K.Hostetter says
Wonderful personal essay!