It has been a banner year for Monarchs (at least from my standpoint).

I’m going to be honest: I only recently learned how incredible monarchs are. I love cranes and I work in conservation relating to cranes, so I’m no stranger to amazing migrations.

But monarchs are a whole different animal. It takes four generations for them to make the journey north from Mexico every spring and summer, with each individual living only long enough to fly a little further, mate, lay eggs, and die.

And then sometime in August and September when the weather starts to change and the late summer milkweed starts to shift, it triggers something in that specific generation. They don’t continue north. They don’t mate. Instead, they turn and head south, little bits of tissue paper flying THOUSANDS OF MILES across prairies and interstates, through the wind and the rain, to Mexico where they will roost on the side of a mountain until winter has passed.

And then they leave, head north, breed, and die after living for nearly nine months (compared to the few weeks of the previous several generations before them.)

That is crazy.

In early September I started noticing them everywhere. When we would drive through the pasture looking for bison they would float across in front of the truck so close I thought they might fly in the window. In the garden they gathered on the purple asters. On windy days they clustered in groups of ten, twenty, thirty in the shelter belt of Siberian elm trees.

As a general rule I don’t interrupt nature’s process, but I planned a family event at work where kids could come see Monarch tagging, so a couple weeks ago I snuck out and gathered a few caterpillars who were almost ready from the swamp milkweed and kept them in an enclosure. One by one they each turned into a beautiful, shimmering, green and gold chrysalis.

On the day of my event not a single one had hatched. Go figure.

But the following day, the day of my daughter’s last big chemo treatment, the day she would break out of this hospital chrysalis and into the sunshine, into the next phase, I woke to two new black and orange monarchs hanging from their now empty shells, wings still soft and wet, not yet ready to fly.

I believe in things like signs and timing. So it didn’t surprise me when monarchs streamed in front of my car across the interstate the whole drive to the hospital. It didn’t surprise me to see one fluttering outside the hospital window even when we were five floors up.

It didn’t surprise me and yet it surprises me every time, to be reminded that we live in a world full of miracles. We are surrounded by them every day, but we usually miss it.

Today I’m grateful I didn’t miss it. ❤️