The Monarch Migration

Every year, millions of Monarch Butterflies head from the Canadian borders to the warmth of mainland Mexico. As I cross this small stretch of beach in Southwest Michigan watching a single Monarch busily flapping its wings, I’m baffled thinking there’s NO WAY this tiny creature can make it from all the way up here in Michigan to Mexico. It can’t possibly have the energy to get all the way there.

And that’s true, it doesn’t.

You see it’s not about that single Monarch getting all the way from where it is in Southwest Michigan today to the warmth of mainland Mexico. That little Monarch simply doesn’t have the energy to get all the way there.

That Monarch can only do its small part and set the direction for the rest of the Monarchs to follow.

Some will flutter off course.

Some will flutter back North.

But the mass of the migration is moving in the same direction, heading to the warmth of the Mexican air for the winter, until they head back North for the summer.

Each one can use the energy that it has to move things in a certain direction, and each one, somewhere in the depths of its small being knows the direction it needs to be heading. North, South, East, West. It’s up to each little Monarch to move, and set the direction it wants to travel.

The whole flock is eventually heading in one direction, each one of them leading the other in to the place they know they have to go, each one knowing it can’t make the whole journey, each one knowing it only has so much energy to get the flock to its final destination, each one knowing that once it gets there, it’s just a small amount of time before they all have to turn around, and head back again.

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