Monarchs

A little bit of timing and a little bit of luck

Today’s accompanying tune: “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes

Several July’s ago, I was in the right place at the right time.

On a whim and the corporate thrill of a sanctioned Summer Friday, I drove northeast from San Francisco to Lassen Volcanic National Park. The “mini Yellowstone” boasted an intriguing list of trails, hot springs, lakes, wildlife, and geology, thanks to its position as the southernmost point in the Cascade Range. It was a hotbed, literally. It sat on a smaller version of the Yellowstone Caldera, spitting out boiling hot water in the form of geysers and bubbling sulphuric mud. The highest peak in the park — Lassen Peak — is a lava dome-shaped active volcano that last erupted at the beginning of the 20th Century. If you want to feel the raw power of the earth, and our precarious place on it, Lassen is the place to do it.

That summer Saturday, I set out with the handful of other visitors — Lassen Volcanic National Park is notoriously vacant of the crowds of tourists that swarm California’s more famous parks — to summit Lassen Peak. The 10,457-foot peak is accessed through a relatively straightforward footpath with a good bit of incline but little else. I walked through the last of the trees covering its lower flanks before emerging into a wonderland of volcanic rock. The trail ebbed from gray to red to black as I swung around its sides, climbing ever closer to the rocky outcrop that marked its true summit. Even in July, the saddle near the summit held snow that had been trodden down by the hikers willing to manage a short crossing to behold the true summit, the highest in the park and the astounding views it afforded on a clear day. Even from the false summit — a wide expanse of relatively flat rocky surface ahead of the snowfield — I could make out the idyllic peaks of the Cascades to the north and the rocky mass of the northernmost points of the Sierra Nevada range.

And as luck would have it, this convergence zone also played a brief yet miraculous role in one of the biggest migrations on the planet. Each year, thousands of monarch butterflies are swept up over 10,000 feet, over the snowfield, through the rocky outcroppings of the southern Cascades on their way to or from the coastal redwoods that comprise their winter layover. Every year, the windswept insects duck and roll and toss in the wind as thermodynamics generate nature’s most obscene thrill ride. Their tiny, paper thin wings both friend and foe for the ride of their life, however fleeting. And on that July Saturday, I was in the right place at exactly the right time to witness it firsthand.

The clear, cloudless sky made it so that the butterflies were able to saunter around the false summit, perched on placards and benches and towering rocks. They floated overhead, at eye level, near the rocky trail. They painted the otherwise barren landscape with pops of orange, white, and black like sentient confetti. Their lives so short, their paths so difficult, that experiencing a moment of their journey resulted in boundless joy for the hikers that had timed it just so. One butterfly landed on an older man who couldn’t stop smiling. Another circled a woman’s hat, unsure of why its perch moved in a circular motion to keep the butterfly in its field of vision. All of us, gifted a miraculous day by the universe, proof that the most natural of rhythms, the most mundane of cycles, magical in its experience.

Timing and luck have never been my strong suit, though I have been gifted glimpses of what striking it rich can feel like. That day in July was one such experience, transcendent in its own right, lifted by the breath of a light breeze and carried on the transparent wings of the monarch. There have been other times — classically perfect days in the alpine, sunsets so saturated as to feel as if they’re made entirely of dreams — when the fact that I’m just exactly in the right place at the right time is difficult to argue with. Sighting a pack of wolves in Denali while the main road was closed is another such example that comes to mind. So does the day of my first ascent of Mount Whitney. If you’re willing to put in a little work, nature’s jackpot is one that refuses to run dry.

I found myself replaying those memories this week as I walked through the Rocky Mountains up to the Continental Divide. Marveling at everything that had had to go right to make those moments come to life — every step, every choice, every snack break, and every misfortune. How fickle timing can be — mere moments separate those comprised purely of magic from those that are simply mundane. That there are times when the universe is willing to step in and turn up the contrast just enough to prove you are in the middle of a moment that will live on in stories told and memories held dear. To say, yes, this is happening. It is happening to you, right now. You’re welcome.

I perched on a rock near the alpine lake just past the pass, the blue skies dotted with clouds eager to announce the arrival of winter with fierce winds and dustings of snow. I listened to the pikas frantically collecting the last bits of greenery they could find before hunkering down among the rocks for the season. I watched her, the mother my body knew before my mind could do anything about it. And I felt, in that moment, that timing and a little luck had once again pulled it off. That we were in exactly the right place high up in the mountains at exactly the right time on a blustery October Tuesday. That we had, once again, been gifted an experience full of love and awe, one magical and natural all the same. That, in nearly 32 years we had become the people we were, the people we needed to be to pull this off. That the earth had shaped us into two sides of the same coin, patinaed with time to the same earthly hue.

Fleetingly magical yet permanently etched in the safe of my heart. A story to be told, over and over, until I wear out its edges and dull its colors. A mere moment of a journey, one we are taking instead of witnessing. Instead of delighting in my own interception of it, this time, I get to embark on it myself, delighting and inspiring those lucky enough to bear witness. A monarch finally reunited with her monarch.

Here’s to you.

- Megan