flâneur

The Butterfly Effect - Creative Nonfiction

creativenonfiction.org · 6,428 words · saved by 1 readers

"When the monarchs hang clustered together, paralyzed by the cold, they are clasped to each other, holding the heat between them. They wait for the sun to warm them." [Metamorphosis] It was cold in Maine. Cold. And the snow was heaped in dirty piles on the side of the road. And the sidewalks were icy. And it got dark at 4:30 in the afternoon. It was the dead of winter, and I wanted out, so I flew to California—to Pacific Grove, aka Butterfly Town, USA, to see the monarchs. It was a journey home, really, though I had never been there. I grew up in a box-shaped house on a well-manicured lawn in the suburbs of a mid-sized Canadian city in Ontario. Across the road and abutting the river was a patch of city land, untended, wild, a field of tall grasses flecked with milkweed and Queen Anne’s lace. There, I discovered my first monarch caterpillar. I was 9 years old, and I had never seen anything like it. Boldly ringed in concentric stripes—black, yellow and white—it was stretched out on a mil

"When the monarchs hang clustered together, paralyzed by the cold, they are clasped to each other, holding the heat between them. They wait for the sun to warm them." [Metamorphosis] It was cold in Maine. Cold. And the snow was heaped in dirty piles on the side of the road. And the sidewalks were icy. And it got dark at 4:30 in the afternoon. It was the dead of winter, and I wanted out, so I flew to California—to Pacific Grove, aka Butterfly Town, USA, to see the monarchs. It was a journey home, really, though I had never been there. I grew up in a box-shaped house on a well-manicured…

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