Saturday, January 9, 2016

Celebrating a Monarch Discovery


"My Weekly Reader" kept
us up-to-date on current
events during my elementary
school years.
I graduated from high school in 1974. That's one of the milestones in your life that you use to measure any number of things, for many years after the fact. Here I am, nearly 42 years later, and I sometimes will still use it as a reference point.

Many things have happened historically since I was in school, meaning I would not have learned them from my textbooks or as current events in the little weekly newspaper I remember getting all through elementary school.

Today's Google Doodle commemorated one such event that happened after my high school graduation, once again bringing home the fact that I'm not getting any younger.


On January 9, 1975, Ken Brugger and his wife, Cathy, first walked into the sanctuary of monarchs as they clung to the oyamel fir trees in Sierra Madre mountains, in the state of Michoacán, in Central Mexico. Prior to this, the exact location of where the monarchs went was not known.

The discovery had been decades in the making. It would be more than a year-and-a-half before National Geographic made the announcement in the August 1976 issue.

My dream is to make the trip to Mexico to see the monarchs as they are overwintering, knowing that some of them may have nectared in my garden here in Ohio. Some of them may have even been born at Our Little Acre.

A monarch ecloses
September 5, 2015



5 comments:

Peg Wiggins said...

Kylee, my daughter & I watched a spectacular movie at the Science Museum in St. Paul, MN about the Life Cycle of the Monarchs. And it was really impressive watching it on the 90-foot giant dome screen of their Omnitheater. It had the feeling of actually being there.

Jason said...

I dream of the same thing. A little more accessible is the area around Santa Barbara where the west coast monarchs roost. We're thinking of going there next year.

Kylee Baumle said...

Peg ~ I've heard about that movie! I want to see it, but it's not playing anywhere near us yet.

Jason ~ Oh, for sure that would be wonderful to see too, and you really should make that trip to see it! But the migration of the eastern population is just almost beyond my comprehension, and Mexico is where *my* monarchs go. :-)

RobinL said...

Yes, that's a dream of mine too, to see the monarchs overwintering in Mexico!

Kylee Baumle said...

Robin ~ Want to join us next winter on our trip?

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