Imagine weighing less than 1/5 of 1 ounce...

... and on your first excursion, you fly 2,000 miles to a place you've never seen.

I saw the most incredible Nova on Tuesday on the flight of the Monarch Butterfly.


These are amazing creatures. I had to post on them because they really got to me.

Here's why.

The first generation is hatched on a remote mountainside in eastern Mexico, south of Texas. This generation flies north to the southern US, lives for one month, shedding it's skin five times (the fifth time it turns into a butterfly), breeds, then dies.

The second generation flies north to the middle of the US, about as far north as southern Illinois. The same pattern happens. They live for one month, shedding their skin five times. After emerging from their chrysalis as a butterfly they mate, lay eggs, and die.

Repeat for the third generation, but this group flies north into Canada.

The fourth generation lives longer. And does something miraculous.

After they emerge as butterflies, they fly 2,000 miles south back to Mexico to the SAME PLACE where the first generation was hatched. And I'm not talking about a scattered incident. These creatures simultaneously synchronize their migration from all over Canada, make an unimaginable flight over lakes, rivers, some survive fierce mid-west summer storms, to arrive on that mountainside in Mexico on the SAME day!

I was balling. Yes, I cried like a baby, with my mouth hanging open.

(A bit of PMS).

But, I think it was more than that.

Think about it.

A feather-light, delicate creature undertakes an Odyssey to a place it's never seen, on a flight longer than they've ever taken. All to spend the winter in Mexico before breeding in March and dying.

They fly to the same endangered forest and cling to the trees for warmth for five months; festooning the branches and limbs in orange and black and white:


Click on the image above: those trees are COVERED in butterflies.


It made me think; if a tiny, fragile creature can accomplish that incredible feat, what are the possibilities for a human being? Limitless...

PS: I don't know how to link music here (or if I even have the ability with my version of Windows on a PC), but this makes me think of Sting's song "Fragile". As humans we are so vulnerable and so amazing at the same time. We are the universe looking at itself.