October 17, 2016

Hello, Monarch Friends!

We people in Angangueo start to feel a little impatient now. Our cloudy, foggy, cold, and rainy days are not allowing the blue sky and bright sunshine that signal of the monarch's imminent arrival.

Today, despite the rain, I drove up to El Rosario, the biggest of all the sanctuaries. I ran into 3 children who live right below El Rosario. When they saw me coming, their voices shouted out:

"Estela! You are back! No news! We urge now for the raining season to be over, so that our region can show a clear signal of ideal weather for monarchs to make their way to their final destination in our mountains!" said Yadira, a 5th grader.

"Many of our parents are now coming back home from cities anxious for the season to start and trying to guess which work they will get at the sanctuaries — guides, tree nursery workers, forest guards," added Manuel (age 8) and Armando (age 9).

As we drove around, they expressed themselves somewhat impatiently at the uncertainty of the weather amidst their excitement at the same time, showing me how the canopy all around looks so fresh green:

"Many flowers started to blossom days ago, Estela, with beautiful colors for monarchs to have nectar when they arrive. Also, you notice how our rivers run full of water, supplying every little pond or stream with fresh clean water and moisture all around for monarchs."

After exploring, we said good bye and they promised to watch for monarchs.

Last Sunday, as we get ready for the monarch welcoming season, the Monarch Reserve Office and local authorities along with community groups of moms, dads, grandmas and grandpas organized a cleaning-up campaign. We walked all over the main roads and little paths surrounding our Oyamel forests.

After the cleaning up task, and in a bit of a hurried way due to the incessant, fine rain, we all gathered together for a group photo, where the Director of the Reserve, Biologist Felipe Martínez, said:

"We are very happy to coordinate this team work with our communities every year before the monarch season starts, picking up any non-friendly rests with the habitat for, which should be arriving in only a few weeks. We are very sorry that our children, who were included in the activity today, had to finally stay at home due to the rain, not allowing them to join this community work. They would have all caught a bad cold and not be able to attend school tomorrow!"

In our report next week, we are sure rain will be absolutely over, since some signs of wind are now a signal of this being the last raining days for us, for sure. By then, our monitoring map and group of local exploring children should be ready to go out in search of very probable signals of the first monarchs approaching our mountains.

Until then, from our very dear, but very wet and slippery homeland.

Estela Romero
Angangueo, Michoacán, México
October 17, 2016