River of souls

Day 3: Monarchs nectaring at El Rosario Sanctuary

I went on pilgrimage to a sacred site. In search of the winter home of my beloved Monarch butterflies.

Monarchs fill me with wonder and delight. They carry happiness on their wings. In summer, whenever I glimpse the flash of orange wings through a window, I rush out into the garden, like a child, to greet them. 

Entranced, I watch them circle and float on radiant wings. I pay close attention to which plants they prefer, how long they stay to sip nectar, whether or not they visit the milkweeds. When they leave, if they return.

Like everything we open our hearts to, the Monarchs speak to us, and teach us. 

Monarchs and their epic journey south speak to the wild, abundant, mysterious presence of life on this being we call Earth. 

Some see Monarchs as a symbol of transformation, and of the soul. Mexican peoples have believed for centuries that Monarch butterflies represent the souls of their ancestors who are returning to visit them, when they arrive around November 2, on Dia de Muertos. Children of the sun, they call them. 

A caterpillar miraculously dissolving, then reassembling itself inside the chrysalis to emerge as a butterfly: this is one mystery.

The billion Monarchs who fly for two months to arrive in the fir forests of Michoacán have never been there before. Yet, somehow, each migrating generation knows where to fly — how to find this precise place in this wide Earth — where the guardian fir trees protect them from intense heat of the sun, rare snow storms, and cold winds that would otherwise kill them, and end their ancestral migration. 

Another mystery. Monarch upon Monarch, mystery upon mystery. 

Day 1: El Rosario Sanctuary

When the sun came out, then we witnessed the most spectacular sight: thousands upon thousands of Monarchs left their trees and took to the air. I no longer had to look at them through binoculars. They were here, zooming just above our heads as we walked down the mountain.

I walked silently, in a dream, amid the surreal magic of tens of thousands of Monarch butterflies winging around me, pouring down the mountain like a river of joy. 

A river of souls, speaking truths to us.

Whispering that our souls are alight. 

That our souls co-exist among millions of souls — all striving, all invisibly connected past present and future by a great web of life that flows from and around this planet into the universe. 

That our souls understand mysteries that our minds do not. 

That our lives are ephemeral, yet beautiful beyond words. 

Day 2: Sierra Chincua Monarch Sanctuary 

See now through my eyes...

Here, resting inside these many mysteries, millions and millions of Monarchs crowd thickly over the fir needles. 

Large clusters of butterflies cling to branches, literally bending them downward with their collective weight. They roost on trunks among the lichens and mosses like dense ruffles of stiff taffeta. Like rust-colored leaves that never fall to the ground.

I saw this. This, I saw with my own eyes. 

The sight was so vast, so strange, and beautiful, and astounding, and overwhelming, that it was difficult to encompass the reality, even as I stood looking at it. 

I looked, and looked, and looked, at the millions of Monarchs roosting in the silent, enchanted trees, or flying very high, black against the bright sky, and it still did not seem completely real. 

On the third day, when the temperature rose, and the sun came out, that was the day the Monarchs came to greet us, their relatives. Then they began to fly in great numbers, accompanying us along the path, flying just above and alongside us as we walked down the mountain. 

Are you my soul guide? I whispered as they flew past. Are you the psychopomp on my journey through the Underworld? 

Then, at last we came to a place where there was an opening, a corridor among the fir trees. And that is where I experienced the wonder, of a river of monarchs, a river of souls: the loveliest sight I have ever seen. 

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The journey: I flew across North America, rode on a bus for three hours, up and up into the Sierra Madre Mountains, to the small town of Angangueo. The next day, we took a 20-minute drive in pick-up trucks to the sanctuary entrance, then half-an-hour on horseback up the mountain, followed by a 15-minute hike to the viewing area.

Iced in

Imbolg is coming, they say. And that reminder is a bit encouraging (though in the north, Imbolg is usually months away from spring).

And yes, it is true that the light rises each day now, minute by quiet minute.

A sense of day, though, can be buried under an entombing sense of frozenness and coldness. Deep snow. Stillness. Days of white-gray sky that hold us pinned to the ice, as we try to find our footing.

Waiting.  

I've had enough of resting, now I'm waiting.

In dim January, and February, and well into March, I must wait for the return of my main source of joy. 

Joy for me is: The wheel of the year, as it turns toward spring, summer, autumn and the winter solstice. 

Feeling the earth stirring around me. Breathing in air laden with precious moisture. Walking the land, hearing wind in the treetops. 

Listening to the liquid language of snowmelt, lapping lakes and trickling rivers. Finding names for wild plants and bird calls as I walk. Smelling the fragrance of sweet prairie grasses. Sun and shadows, mare's tail clouds.

Though winter scours my spirit every year, it can gift me moments of stunning beauty...like the night I glanced out to find a diamond snow fallen on the roof, silently sparkling with starry flashes of green, silver and blue under the light of a full moon. 

Other days, a quiet beauty flies on black crows' wings as they curve their elegant paths across the sky. 

Or the beautiful way a shadow-black oak catches the low-riding sun in its branches and holds it there, like a glowing orb of ice-pearl. 

Somewhere, in the wilder-lands, I know that the Great Horned Owl already has begun to nest. And the bald eagles by the great river will soon claim their territory and lay their eggs.

The great movement toward the vernal equinox has begun; as always, so quietly that it is easy to imagine that nothing is changing at all out there, in the snow; or here, in my longing for what is not.

I may tell myself nothing is changing, but it is. Already, I know what I would like to go toward (sometimes it takes months to figure that out). 

I wrote this list without needing to think: Warblers. Owls. Migration. Hawk Ridge Observatory. Dawn chorus. Dark sky. Milky Way. Writing in new forms. Tent camping. National wildlife refuges.  

More of what brings me joy — for our time is short, and what we love is vast. 

I wish you the same.