WALLINGFORD, Vermont – We were coming home late on a fall afternoon. As we slid up the driveway towards the house, which sits higher than the road, we noticed fluttering around the tops of the big sugar maples behind the house. Getting closer, we saw it was hundreds, no, thousands of monarch butterflies settling on our maple trees. They had come for the night.
We were used to seeing single monarchs, flitting about the garden and fields, or flying directly past as they migrated. You don’t think of butterflies as being strong flyers, but a monarch can swiftly disappear into the distance when it has somewhere else to be. But this was different. This was thousands landing on two large trees.
How could this happen? How did thousands of butterflies, each flying its own path, happen to gather like this? Were they looking for each other, seeking the company of their fellows when settling for the night? Or was it a magnificent coincidence owing to breezes blowing just so, creating a river of butterflies coming south along the valley, that just happened upon our trees as the day was ending.
These particular trees stood out, being the big, original trees that had grown up around the original farmhouse which sat perfectly at the top of a small knoll, with views up and down the valley. Although a new house had replaced the original house, the big, old trees remained. The grazed fields immediately around the house made it and its trees an island in the middle of the valley.
I leapt from the car and raced for binoculars and camera. My early teen boys said “that’s pretty cool, mum,” looked briefly, then disappeared inside. I took photos, wide and zoomed, hoping to capture the magic. There was some fluttering about, as the butterflies moved around, but once settled they folded their wings together over their backs, showing only the paler colors of the undersides of their wings. It was getting dark and I had dinner to make.