Migration
I lost my sense of time in that clearing. The moments I spent there were far too brief, but for all I know I was there for hours. That pine-sheltered, breeze-kissed circle of wildflowers came after an hour (maybe more?) of climbing an increasingly beautiful hillside. Halfway up I dismounted from my horse, both because his breathing was laboured and because the air was suddenly thick with butterflies. The path had become a tunnel in the trees, and majestic orange and black monarchs came flittering through it as if moved by an unseen current.
Words stop when the air moves. After another twenty minutes of silent ascension, punctuated only by gasps and the occasional cry of wonder, we reached the clearing on a crest between two mountains. The sky was a brilliant blue and the ground a tangle of purple and yellow blossoms. The monarchs numbered in the millions. They brushed past me, leaving velvety traces on my skin, so luxuriously graceful they seemed almost heavy in the air. I craned my neck backwards to watch them float above me, shockingly orange against the sky. When they passed in front of the sun, their backlit wings turned delicate and fragile as rice paper. The mountain continued on upward, and the monarchs gathered on trees in such numbers that they dragged even the sturdiest boughs into drooping submission. It was nothing short of magnificent.
Across the plateau, my friend Shannon sits on a fallen tree surrounded by pale flowers. She plucks one and tucks it behind her ear, patiently waiting for some of our ethereal comrades to alight on the bloom. Shannon, who came to join me in Mexico after battling cancer in the last year of her twenties—a year that weakened her, tore open her body, and devastated her heart. She had been through more battles than I thought a single being could endure, yet she was here, having made her voyage just as the millions of monarchs had fought their way from Canada.
My own journey had been almost comically privileged in comparison. I had come to Mexico with the bitter taste of a breakup in my mouth. I sought refuge in the new; I flitted from the rush of Mexico City to the charm of San Miguel and Guanajuato; from the commercialized, dollar-sodden beaches of the Yucatan to the bohemian shores of the Pacific coast; from high altitude deserts to dripping jungles; from a red and turquoise Baja to flamingo-pink islands on the threshold of the Caribbean. I met family I never knew I needed, saw old friends, found and lost a new one, and hid away alone in a desert cabin. In the end, after cheating on Mexico twice (once with Argentina and once with England), I found myself renewing the relationship I’d come away to leave in the first place.
What touches me most about the monarchs is that they don’t know why they fly. How could they know what awaits them as their fragile wings carry them across an entire continent? How could they know that these miles upon miles that they cross allow life to continue? My journey thus far—charmed though it has been—has led me in directions I never thought I’d go, but I’ve learned have been exactly what I needed. How Shannon must feel, I can’t fathom. I only hope that hers ends not only in healing, but in life.
