Every year, monarch butterflies travel up to 2,800 miles, but their numbers are shrinking.
She also had no idea how this decision would eventually transform her life.
All these butterflies dropped from the sky and started to gravitate toward the trees, she recalls.
Credit:Wynn Myers
Stronger people who could swing a big 12-foot-long pole began trying to capture them, and we waited.
The journey is a treacherous one, with many butterflies never arriving at their intended destination.
Still, these majestic creatures flit and float their way through it every yearand then fly back come spring.
Credit:Wynn Myers
We went kayaking at our usual spots, along a grove of pecan trees.
I looked up, and the butterflies erupted, she recalls.
That night, she tagged 50 of them.
Last fall, however, researchers recorded the second-smallest roost since measurements started in 1993.
This downward trend is nothing new for those who carefully monitor the annual voyages.
Droughts, floods, and other extreme weather conditions have destroyed these roosting and breeding grounds.
Their migration spans a relatively small area in comparison to the transcontinental trek of their peers.
Those stories, Maeckle notes, offer reason for hope.
Whatever this next chapter holds for monarchs, theyre going to be around.
They will still be with us, Maeckle says.
Theyre just morphing to the next stage.
