Returns (Quade)

On March 8. 2020, Mom and I rested on the dusty forest floor of the mountain Cerro Pelon, northeast of the small village of Macheros, Mexico. Above us, in oyamel trees growing up the steep hillside, clusters of monarch butterflies awoke in the sunlight, bursting into small clouds. There were only six of us hunkered there, including our naturalist guide, Ana, who grew up in the village and works for her brother Joel’s butterfly tourism business. This was my fourth trip up Cerro Pelon and Mom’s third. I love to travel to new places, but I also yearn to return to places I’ve been. Sometimes before I’ve even left somewhere, I’m imagining how to get back. Of all the places I’ve visited, I’ve returned to Cerro Pelon the most; I’d hoped to be back again in the summer, to begin some research on a project I’ve been dreaming up. In Macheros on the evening of March 8, I lingered with my friends Joel and Ellen on their rooftop patio, looking out over the surrounding mountains, drinking wine, thinking about how I would come back, maybe in late July, maybe early August. Then, a week later, on March 15, as you know, Ohio’s governor began shutting down the state.

In the days leading up to our flight to Mexico, Mom and I discussed whether or not we should travel, as outbreak crept closer to pandemic, but we had the tickets and the CDC wasn’t saying not to go, and so she flew to Ohio from her home in Wisconsin and we packed our hand sanitizer and alcohol wipes and got on the plane to Mexico City. We didn’t know as much then as we know now, and part of me is strangely grateful.

The monarchs on Cerro Pelon have arrived there by flying from parts of North America east of the Rockies, some from as far away as Canada. They overwinter in these Mexican trees, huddled together, occasionally flying around to nectar on flowers. They must survive predators and illegal logging and weather. And then, in mid-March, they begin to fly north, where through multiple generations, they make their way across the continent, feeding on milkweed, until the final generation of the season flies back south. Maybe you already know this.

I meant today to write about the pandemic, but I find myself writing, once again, about butterflies. If you know me well, you know I love butterflies.

To get to the wintering grounds on Cerro Pelon, we take a steep path on horseback. The location of the grounds moves around the mountain year-to-year, so the path changes as well. Cerro Pelon straddles the state of Mexico and the state of Michoacán, with these butterflies above Macheros in the state of Mexico, though other butterfly wintering grounds are in Michoacán.

Today, I sit in the garden on our few acres of land on the border of Lake and Ashtabula counties in Northeast Ohio. Though we’ve been seeing a monarch here and there since June, a week or so ago they started to arrive in numbers, drifting from one patch of milkweed to the next. By the milkweed near our back door, one of the early arrivers must’ve laid an egg, because now a caterpillar as long as my thumb is gnawing away, growing, getting ready to wander off and become a chrysalis, where it will hang for a while and emerge as a butterfly. You know this.

The monarchs aren’t shy. One just zipped right over my head, and yesterday another had to make a last- second adjustment of flight path to avoid crashing into my chest.

The migratory monarch population has suffered a steep decline, but the numbers are slowly, though unsteadily, increasing—still far from where they were decades ago. You might know this. But the way these statistics are gathered can be problematic, so it’s really hard to say if the numbers are telling an accurate story.

My house sits in a county that as of yesterday has had 851 recorded cases, 107 hospitalizations, and 26 deaths. If I walk across the road, I’m in a county with 497 recorded cases, 84 hospitalizations, and 44 deaths. I don’t really know what to make of these numbers. They would seem to indicate that if I lived across the road, I’d be more likely to die if I contracted the virus. But I’m not a statistician.

The current increase in virus cases can certainly be blamed on people’s wish to return to the place they lived in before the virus, a place with fewer sacrifices. But we all know that place doesn’t exist anymore, and maybe really shouldn’t have in the first place. We know—or should know—that an investment in sacrifice now will pay off for the future.

If I sit quietly long enough here in the garden, a rabbit will hop by, a chipmunk will settle on the rocks near me, a hummingbird will visit the nearby flowers, a clearwing moth will hover, or, as just happened, a house wren will land on my chair. If I sit quietly and watch the monarchs fly around, eventually I will see the females laying eggs. One monarch may lay between 300-500 eggs, but less than 10% of these eggs survive to become butterflies. The number may actually be lower, but no one knows for sure.

My parents often come visit us on Labor Day, and so for the past couple of years, I’ve raised monarch eggs timed to hopefully emerge as butterflies when Mom is here so she can release one. But this year, with school starting despite the virus, there will be no visit. I’ll be in contact with my classes, and those students will be in contact with more students. It’s almost impossible for me to picture how that will work. My parents are in good health, but in the second half of their seventies, though you wouldn’t guess it from Mom’s horse ride up the mountain in rural Mexico. I’d rather they not take the risks of travel. Instead, next week, my husband and I will make the ten-hour drive to Wisconsin, stopping as few times as possible for gas. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the virus numbers don’t explode before then, because, as you know, they could.

I can never figure out why the monarchs lay eggs on one milkweed and not another. They fly and fly around, alighting on a plant, then moving on without laying an egg. They have some future in mind for the next generation, and they know where they want it to start, even when to me one leaf looks exactly the same as any other. Sometimes, when I examine the most unlikely milkweed plant—a few young leaves popping from an otherwise mowed lawn—I find them there, those possibilities. 

Mary Quade is the author of two poetry collections and the recipient of four Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards for both poetry and prose. She teaches creative writing at Hiram College. maryquade.com.