"A generation goes and a generation comes," [Ecclesiastes 1:4] has special meaning for me regarding the Monarch butterfly. As summer edges into autumn, across North America, Monarchs swarm and begin an epic migration thousands of miles south to a great wintering area in Mexican mountain forests. Then, in spring, the survivors of that great winter flock flutter north to repopulate landscapes from which their ancestors came, some reaching the prairies of southern Canada.
From March through October, the butterflies drink the nectar and the caterpillars munch on the leaves of milkweed plants—tall, broad leafed plants with a bitter, milky sap. The butterflies, drawn to the perfume of clustered, pinkish blooms, linger to lay tiny white eggs on the leaves. The eggs hatch into minute green and black caterpillars that feast endlessly to become big fat specimens; when they attain full size the caterpillars transform into delicate, beautiful chrysalises, to emerge as orange and black monarchs.
This cycle repeats three or four times throughout a hospitable summer. The final generation “knows” its destiny. Rather than laying eggs, these last Monarchs of summer flock and begin a trek that can be as long as twenty-five hundred miles.
For three summers I’ve allowed a volunteer milkweed to grown in the corner of a border of variegated dogwood alongside my driveway. The single plant, this year, has exploded into a score and more, with a few trying to establish in my lawn, fifteen feet from the original plant. A gardener friend said that milkweed spread by sending out roots, so I now have a well-established colony.
A few weeks ago the perfume of milkweed flowers wafted a gentle, sweet perfume that caused me to bury my nose in a blossom. To my eye the little blooms look like pastel bursts of fireworks, the variety that radiate from the center out to form a ball.
Milkweed perfumes must be an olfactory siren call to Monarchs. For a few days three, four, and even more Monarchs at a time have fluttered among the beguiling blossoms. They seem besotted to my eye. Now and again a pair spins skyward in a mating ritual.
In Nature everything has a season. The season cycles through the generations, usually resting in the larger cycle of a year. For the Monarchs the yearly cycle has discrete cycles throughout the spring and summer. The result is a constancy of life, but the constancy rests on generation going and coming.
Ecclesiastes in beguiling poeticized prose conveys this intuited truth.
Though generations cease to be, the succession of generations seem right and fitting, and even offers consolation, if not comfort regarding mortality.
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