During the intermission, the woman explained to me how she had lived most of her life on the West Coast of America and always accepted that the massive body of water was to the West. Then she moved here to the East coast a little more than a decade ago and she said she still has to sometimes reset her internal compass to accept that the water is to the East, that the sun sets over the continent. I thought about this and then somehow realized we are like birds, turtles and lots of others, such as some butterflies, in having that magnetic compass that has been set inside by the earth. Like us they instinctively know North and South and East and West and then have it confirmed by land masses and bodies of water and sometimes by smells and wind drifts. I think we do the same, but ignore this inner link to our earth because we have other technical guidance systems and pathways that distract us and keep us on task. The artificial temperatures we create and the artificial smells turn us to a narrower path.
This year I had only ONE Monarch butterfly visit the yard. I have planted at least three butterfly milkweed plants for them to eat and use, but to no avail. They are disappearing. We never had many on this side of the continent, but now some are talking of near extinction. It is just a butterfly after all. Who would notice if it was gone? It is just one more tiny knot in the fabric of life that it beginning to come loose.
