on the trail of the monarch part 1

Things have been pretty soggy here, a whole big box of rain through April and May, and that’s slowed spring down almost to a halt. The Lilacs are only just beginning to bloom. And the milkweed is barely out of the ground.

Impatient to start rearing this year’s brood, I thought I’d take matters into my own hands, drive south and see what I could see. The Journey North website listed a few sitings in the Niagara Region, my old stomping grounds, and I did distinctly remember gathering eggs in May for a science project wayyy back in time, so I figured it was a safe bet. And It was a beautiful day, and I was long overdue for a roadtrip.

But, as the bard says:

Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

Someone thought it was a good idea to do construction on the Gardiner Expressway on a holiday weekend. It took me about an hour to get out of the city, and two accidents on the QEW meant that my 1 1/4 journey to Ball’s Falls took closer to three hours, and took a lot of the wind out of my as well. When I finally did get into the woods, I was in a foul mood, and had lost my sense of Thoreau-vian wanderlust. I was impatient to find exactly what I was seeking, and that never makes for a good nature romp.

I’m not sure how Ball’s Falls entered my mind as the premium destination- a google search of monarch sightings in Niagara listed it as a prime location for the migration, and I think in the fall this might be true. But there’s no meadow land there- at least none that I could find. Still, I had gone there once as a child, and figured it would make a nice romp. It is a beautiful walk, no mistake. But my impatience didn’t mesh well with the families and strollers, yes, strollers, on the trail. And the trail to the upper falls was over before I began it. I thought that maybe the physical exertion of hiking would get my serotonin going. But there was barely enough to break a sweat, let alone experience any kind of emotional cleansing. I did not take any pictures of the falls. Beautiful as they are- I leave that kind of thing to the experts. The trail was, however, dotted with violets, and I have a soft spot for violets in the spring.

Frustrated, I decided to move on to some familiar milkweed patches, and began heading back to the car. I took the paths less and less traveled by, and I may have stepped over some branches that were perhaps maybe left there intentionally to prevent trespassers from leaving the public grounds into the private. I was drawn by the sight of an open field.  And then the sound of many, many birds. And then the sight of birds diving into a small copse of trees in such a way that made it seem like this was THE place to be.

So I went forth. And came across a naturalist’s paradise. There was a small pond, surrounded all around by thickets and trees- with just a small enough opening for a person to hunker down close to the edge and watch. As I approached, a frog jumped off the side of the pond, emitting exactly the “yikes” sound that Annie Dillard describes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I knelt down by the edge, and saw hundreds, if not thousands of tadpoles. The picture does not do it justice at all at all. I was immediately flooded with happiness. I don’t think I’ve seen any tadpoles since I was a child. I haven’t gone out of my way to find them, but whenever I’ve been near a pond that seemed to have the right conditions, I’ve looked. How many hours did I spend as a child mucking about near creeks and ponds? How many jars of pond water with tadpoles did I collect? Not a single one ever produced a frog. They all died before they got that far. These days, I would have the internet to use as a guide to learn how to do it right. I need to find a pond close by. I miss ponds.

I communed with the tadpoles for a good long time, well aware that there were all kinds of interesting birds in the surrounding thicket. Tiny warbler-y things. But I hadn’t brought my binoculars- didn’t feel like working so hard this time. And the day was getting on. And I was still really in search of Monarchs.

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