Consider the Monarch butterfly

by Jonathan Shipley

I write this on my birthday: one day further away from my cradle, one day closer to my grave, cradled by the earth. It all goes by in a flash. It all takes an eternity. It’s a wonder I’m still alive. It’s a wonder I’m alive at all.

It’s a journey. I’m taking it. Those before me have all taken it. Everyone after me will take it. There is no escaping the delicate beauty that is a life: a miracle, a mire, a dream, a difficulty, a time of trauma, a time of indescribable beauty.

Consider the monarch butterfly. The marsh is littered with them on this day. We could all look to their example as a way to live. The last generation born in late summer and early fall flies as many as 3,000 miles from parts around here—this very marsh—to the forested highlands of central Mexico, a place they have never been.

I was born in early fall. I am thousands of miles from the place of my birth. Did I expect to be here in Madison, Wisconsin, in my 53rd year, a loving wife at home, two children—young women now, journeying themselves upon their wings of gold? I did not. And yet, here I stand. Indescribable.

It is the journey that matters. It is all that matters. My existence is a miracle; a single coincidence of untold coincidences.

The butterfly I am photographing right now—what are the chances that we would meet?

Monarchs travel about 50 miles a day. Some can fly as far as 80 miles.

I do not know how many times I’ve walked these same marsh paths—hundreds of times by now. I do it over and over again. The same thing. The same path. The same trees. The same prairies. The same fields. The same riverside.

That’s all a deception, of course. Each time everything is changed, different, new. As am I. Tomorrow I will be a person different from who I am today. As Heraclitus told us some 2500 years ago, we never step in the same river twice.

A migration.

A monarch, perhaps this one twisting on a milkweed at my feet, goes to Mexico soon, arriving around the Day of the Dead. Some locals believe that they are the spirits of deceased ancestors, come back to visit.

I told my wife that, when I die, she’ll know I am close when she can hear a baseball game. The only way my dad has said, “I love you,” is by talking about the Seattle Mariners. I never knew my dad’s father, but he is a part of me, and my grandfather’s father is, too. They all migrated to me, right here, my heart beating next to this milkweed, this monarch.

Most monarchs live for about five weeks. The migratory “Methuselah” generation can live seven to eight months. Scientists don’t quite understand why.

I think it might be because monarch butterflies aren’t just science. They’re art, as well. In a poem by Mary K. O’Melveny titled “If I Were a Monarch Butterfly,” she writes: I can’t be contained, reigned in, pinned down. Watch me soar from hot club to blues bar, from waltz to swing dance. Follow me as I cross mountains, boundaries, border walls, from Clouds to that elusive Mansion of Our Dreams.

I walk the marsh on my birthday, butterflies nearby. I walk to find myself. In the walking, I am found. Each step is a lifetime. Every footstep behind me—the lifetimes of my ancestors. Every footstep before me, the trail, empty, full of what next. Life is forever. Life is right this second. The life of my grandfather’s father is in my next heart’s beat. My children’s unknown future is in this heartbeat right … now. My heart is aflutter with my wife, each of her footfalls a beat. Her history right here in chest. Her future. Our future.

It’s a wonder I’m here at this marsh at all. I look at the butterfly. It rises in the breeze. It disappears, only to be right here with me, with us, with everyone on this day. This forever.