Message from Angangueo October 19, 2005 Dear friends joining the Monarch South Migration this year: Yes, no butterfly at sight yet. The rain has stopped for the moment, although in the southern part of the country we are awiting for another tropical storm which we hope will be not as desastrous as Stan. The news say that none can imagine the suffering of our people there as well as in the border with Guatemala. Today's Weather Forecast for the Monarch's Winter Refuge in Mexico We in my family were wondering what might happen in Angangueo if a natural calamity, such as that desastrous storm would come to us. Angangueo is a town laying at the bottom of several mountains. The town itself runs North-South in a long stripe and both sides of this "stripe" are surrounded by mountains. The stripe inclination is such that, in case of disaster, the mountains would protect the town from outer in-flows (I don´t have the exact words in English to describe this), and because of the inclination itself, the water would run down, so that there would be no real flow in the town. Different from decades ago, nowadays, we worry, since, because of the high forest logging we have had in the last decade --at least--, our mountains guarantee no real protection, but on the contrary, might be a big danger, since big areas on them are loose earth and even erosion in some parts. Such a natural disaster like a storm like Stan or others ocurring in other parts of the world would cause big disasters in our area since we have not enough consistency and strenght in our mountains anymore. Few people up to now, we think, really stop to reflect about this. But we hope that the grief of our co-nationals in the south will touch our consciousness on nature preservation more and more. Until next week, Maria Estela Copyright 2005 Journey North. All Rights Reserved. Please send all questions, comments, and suggestions to our feedback form.