A butterfly, as its name signifies, is a one of natures of subtle beauties. The wings are so fragile but colorful, and they flap around as if nature is always a paradise. But have your ever heard a butterfly flap its wings? I have and let me tell you all about it.

The Monarch butterfly is one of the unique insects that lives through its journey from South America to North America. The journey from Mexico to the northern reaches of Maine and Washington (or even further to Canada) and back. But the journey is not made by a single butterfly. It is made by 3 generations of butterflies!

The first batch starts from Central Mexico and makes it one third of the way. They then spawn a new generation and die. The next generation makes it up to the northern reaches and returns and spawns the last generation that makes it back to Mexico to spawn and die. The abundance of milkweed trees is a big requirement for these creatures. That is where they lay their eggs and a source of rich nutrition for the caterpillars that hatch.

Somehow the starting point is central Mexico. From there the journey begins, but when they enter North America, they diverge into 5 or more streams and go up different directions. But miraculously the 3rd set returns to Mexico. While there are many places in North America where Monarch butterflies nest and spawn but none are more spectacular as the one at the point of origin. The Monarch Grove at Santa Cruz’s Natural Bridges State Beach, Monarch Butterfly Grove at Pismo Beach, the Monarch Grove Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, and Goleta Monarch Butterfly Grove in Goleta are some places where the monarch butterflies nest and spawn in California. But none are as spectacular as the one in A migration map clarifies the whole scenario.

Having said all this would you not want to visit the starting point? Let me briefly walk you through our wonderful day trip. We had booked a personal trip with Viator. Our guide and driver (they probably work as ateam). They picked us up from the hotel in Mexico city and we (the four of us) drove for about 3 hrs. into the mountains north of Mexico City called – Michoacan. As we drove, we probed our guide to talk about their lives, where they grew up and what life was in Mexico. We shared some of our lives too. These guides are an encyclopedia of knowledge. You just have to know how to tap it without getting overloaded. On reaching Michoacan, there we started our 2 and 1/2-mile hike through beautiful, shaded woods (could not have asked for better weather in December).

As we hiked, our guides told us more about the flora and Mexico. The base of our hike was a small, picturesque hamlet. Our guides promised that lunch would be in the village. As we hiked up, we started noticing that there were so many flowers. Believe it or not we found flowers with 1,2,3,4,…9 and 10 petals! If you have your curiosity antenna up and tuned, you will notice a lot of things.

As we came towards the nesting and spawning ground, we started seeing butterflies flapping around and the density started increasing as we progressed. At the summit we saw 100’s of 1000’s in the trees. A 1000 or so were on the ground. Every time the cloud cleared, and the sun showed itself and gently warmed the ground a few 1000 would takeoff and fly around. When the sun was covered by cloud they would sit back on the trees or ground. This dance was just so beautiful. This is hard to capture in a still picture. People were so nice that they whispered to each other as if the butterflies had swooshed down on them and asked them to be shush. I was so absorbed in watching them that my ears perked up and my senses were heightened as I watched these gentle creatures performed their dance. I stood still and let the Bflies fly close. The sun came out and a few BFs that were close by started flapping their wings. That is when I heard the wings flapping! Interestingly the monarch butterflies are rather large and weigh about 1 gram. Just large enough that the when the wings flap you can hear the wings flap (if you pay attention).

You can see that I know refer to them as BF (Best Friend). My pictures don’t do justice to the beauty of these travelers. Our guide picked up the wings of dead butterflies and gave us a mini course of how to tell males and females apart.

On the way back we asked our guides for a favor. There is a creature in these parts of Mexico called the Axolotl that is considered a fountain of life creature because of its regenerative powers. Even if every limb or body part ( except head ??) is amputated, they can regenerate that part over time It is much like the salamander except with much more enhanced regenerative powers. We asked our guide to show us these creatures in the wild. They were so happy to do it. In one of stream, we spotted several of these swimming around.

The butterflies live and die to journey great distances and these axolotls’ sport regenerative powers challenging death – We humans can do neither but we should relish coexisting with and watching these beautiful creatures. Let us not forget that butterfly starts out as a caterpillar and then emerges from a cocoon as a beautiful, winged creature. It is sort of a double life – life as a caterpillar is quite different from that of a butterfly. We enjoyed our food and drink at the hamlet and silently (as we were tired) came back to our hotel 3 hours later. On the way back I narrated my experience of a birding experience.

There is another creature (sandhill cranes) that makes a long journey and stops at some select places along the route. I will share that experience in another article. This is one of the best Nature hikes I have been on. I would highly recommend it. If you are a nature lover, you will enjoy it.