I’d gingerly put out some feelers on the Whitby Community Facebook and Neighbourly pages seeking thoughts about day to day urban experiences and connections with insect pollinators. Luke was among those who responded. I was thrilled when he invited me to pop round and chat about his gardening style. He had a plan to convert a grass strip alongside the driveway into wildflowers for bees, butterflies and other more-than-human neighbours. Yet on that warm afternoon there was something more I witnessed in the encounter.
Whitby locals Alan and Marie, have kindly allowed me to share a couple their stunning photos (above and below) from their trek to visit endangered monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico’s Sierra Chincua sanctuary. At about this time of year (Northern Hemisphere’s autumn) the butterflies migrate up to 3,000 miles from Canada and North America – an incredible natural phenomenon.* “The sound of their flapping was like light rain” says Alan. Their local guide, Raúl Hernández, remarked “if there was a god they would be here”, recalls Marie. Her thoughts drift back to when they heard, years later, that Raúl and fellow activist and manager of the federally protected Reserva de Biosfera de la Mariposa Monarca (Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve) were killed in suspicious circumstances. The tensions between local communities seeking sustainable tourism from the Reserve and others carrying out logging and clearcutting for avocado plantations underscore the forced marginalisation of human and butterfly from ancient lands.
The trip inspired Marie and Alan to do something for the Whitby butterfly population and other pollinators. So over a cuppa we started talking about that but the conversation seemed to have its own pathway, floating, butterfly-like, into discussions about living in a community and a collective culture in a local place.
Tree branches droop with the weight of millions of monarch butterflies, wings closed, in huge clusters of tightly packed formations. Their brown masses well camouflaged, resembling parts of the oyamel fir and pine forestsin which they overwinter in Mexico.
Photo credit here and above: Alan and Marie Roberts, Whitby
Edge of Things 