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| A Cluster Near Light House Field Beach, CLICK TO ENLARGE |
12/29/17 Friday
Arrived at SFO, checked into Westin Hotel. Took naps.
Not enough time left in the day to scout sites. The reason is that getting the rental car
took a couple hours longer than we expected.
The rental company was supposed to have a car at the Marriot Hotel, and
instead we had to chase it down.
12/30/17 Saturday
Visited Stern Grove (1) and looked around for a couple
hours. Asked several people if they had seen monarchs and where. We got no real specific information about a
cluster. At last we saw one individual flying overhead, but did not see where
it went. I took a photo of the
location. The temp was 55 degrees F at
the car.
Left there and drove north to the Rob Hill Campground at the
Presidio (2). Walked everywhere in that
site, on, and pretty much off trail, but found no clusters and saw no
butterflies. I noted that the official naturalist
for that site said on the video that the habitat was “sensitive” and visitors
should stay on the trails. The habitat
was not sensitive. The ground was
covered mostly by English Ivy, which is not native and is extremely durable. We had decided to leave, but I wanted to walk
one more loop. Eventually at the top of
the hill, near the open, cleared area, we saw a monarch or two. A man with a mountain bicycle was standing
there. I asked him if he had just seen
butterflies and he said, Yes. That was
2:pm. He told us of his interest, and
while we talked I counted 24. Some of those may have been counted twice, and
I’m sure we missed several. He was
originally from the Highlands of Scotland and said his name was Fraser. He did
organic farming and sold produce. Had
done “tech” before. After awhile it
cooled some and we saw no more monarchs.
Did not find a cluster, but I think we might have if we had seen before
what they looked like and how high they normally were.
We left there and drove to Big Basin Redwoods State Park California road map, and
using Siri on Edie’s photo did not tell us north from south. We eventually made it and set up our tent in
the dark in a redwood grove containing mammoth trees.
12/31/17 Sunday
In the morning we packed up and went for a short loop walk
in a redwood grove that featured one tree 60 feet around at chest high. The state park is a place worth returning to
someday. From the park we drove south
and bought a road map at a small town, probably Ben Lomand. From here we traveled around the outskirts of
Santa Cruz to Natural Bridges
State Beach
I believe the other site is called Lighthouse
Field State
Beach (4), which is in a eucalyptus
and Monterey
pine grove next to a neighborhood. I
heard from someone (I think the park ranger) that this site contained 15,000
monarchs. The clusters were certainly
larger than anything we had seen before or since. There were four or five of them in the pine
boughs. I took the best pictures there,
though the light was not very good. Actually, I just looked at a map and the
site we went to was not at the Lighthouse Field beach, but a couple blocks
north, down a residential avenue, just east of the Surfer Sculpture.
We left there and drove down Highway 1 around the Monterey Bay
and then slightly north through the town of Monterey ,
including Cannery Row into the town of Pacific
Grove . The
whole area is highly developed. The Pacific Grove monarch
grove (5) is a square of land, covered in trees, in the middle of a residential
area. It features a nice, paved (I
believe), winding trail. Right next door
on the uphill side is the pink Monarch Inn, or an inn of a similar name. We hadn’t made any reservations for the night
and we would have stayed there, but it was full. New Year’s Eve and all. We walked up and down
the path a couple times, and while we saw flying monarchs, we couldn’t find a
cluster, nor could anyone else we spoke to.
It was starting to get dark and cool, so we left and drove through Carmel and down the 20 miles to Pfeiffer Big Sur
State Park
1/1/18 Monday
We had heard that Highway 1 had been blocked south of us,
but I didn’t know exactly where. We
finally figured out in the morning that we could not get where we wanted to go
without backtracking. We drove south a
ways further just to see more of the famed coastland, and then turned
around. We had passed Andrew Molera State
Park (6), said to have a monarch site, in the dark on the way down, but I
decided to check it out now. The park
didn’t look like much. No more than a
gravel parking lot, two overbusy outhouses and a trail to the beach. A good bit of the park was closed due to
winter storm damage. I guessed that the
monarchs were in the closed part. A
Hispanic maintenance man pulled up to maintain the outhouses and I asked him
where the butterflies were. He told me
that it was up the trail a mile, passed the yellow tape. He said that it was dangerous to go there and
there was no other access, not a road to it from the highway. We waited until
he was not visible, ducked under the tape and walked up the trail. It meandered along a wide creek and in places
was washed out, but it was nothing we couldn’t bypass and there wasn’t anything
remotely dangerous, unless it was the six-point buck we flushed. I got some good pictures of him. The trail led to a large green field that was
the park’s campground. It was a nice
place. It appeared that the park was closed due to lack of funding as much as
it was to damage. We happened to see no damage to the campground, actually.
From the northern end of the campground, I could see a large eucalyptus grove
and sure enough, we saw flying monarchs there.
I could also hear bees among the flowers in the tops of the trees. We walked further until the trail was totally
washed away by the stream and the water was more of a lagoon. We could hear the waves crashing on the other
side of the dunes. We walked a road back
to the highway up the hill from the campground and did not return via the
trail, proving the maintenance man to be dishonest about the information he
gave us.
From here we returned to Carmel
and cut across to Highway 101, taking it south to Atascadero
and 46, which crossed a mountain pass and was lined with dozens of
well-arranged vineyards. At Los Osos we
stocked up at Ralph’s Grocery, part of the Kroger chain. My camping reservation
was for site 42, but after seeing it, I was able to change it with the host to
44 between two giant art pines. I
gathered leftover firewood from the pits of the empty campsites and found a
chunk of pitch pine. One piece of wood
was smoldering so I didn’t need a match.
As a birthday party, Edie and I shared a little chocolate cheesecake
that we got at Ralph’s. I made a video of it, and me singing Happy Birthday.
1/2/18 Tuesday
We walked on the beach in the morning and got our boots
soaked. We left our tent up since we
planned to return, and drove south to Pismo State
Beach
Written 1/15/18
The Pismo Grove monarch experience, and indeed the whole
western monarch phenomenon, is very much different than anything in the
east. For us in the eastern states, we
know monarch butterflies in the spring, summer, and fall. For us the migration, sometimes in large
numbers, captures our attention. When we
think of the winter monarchs, we immediately think of Mexico . Many people here have heard of monarchs and
seen them, either in fields or on the move south, but few of us even know of
the western migration and overwintering butterflies on the coast of California . It simply isn’t within our field of
vision. Neither do we in the east have
much in the way of organized observations.
Educational efforts, yes, but nothing like what I saw at Pismo Beach
It stands to reason.
The overwintering season lasts three months or so. The butterflies hang out within small
geographic areas, sometimes in clusters adding up to thousands of
individuals. Many sites are near high
density human populations. It makes sense that people would establish preserves
and ways for people to see the clusters and the feeding, mating, sunning,
watering and anything else monarchs might think of doing on their winter
grounds.
The Central Coast Park Association (CCSPA) organization is a
private auxiliary to the California
state parks. When I first arrived at the
Pismo Grove, I met one of CCSPA’s docents, Jene Schaefer. She told me that they have 80-90-some docent
staff members in the monarch program (120 in the whole district), who explain
and interpret the monarch site and happenings to the visitors who flood the
grove during the monarch winter season, anywhere from 800 to 2,000 a day. In 2015-2016, as one of the two docents I
talked to said, the total number of visitors was 100,000. In 2017-2018, 80,000. They arrive by car or by the busload. Some, I imagine, camp in the next door state
park campground.
The docent who seemed to be in charge that day was Betty
Sleeth. I talked with her at length,
though not as much as Jene. Betty told
me about the IMAX film that covered the monarch migration. Flight of the Butterflies.
The Pismo Grove site has the feel of a small
fairground. Gravel walkways comprise the
public parts of the grove and the eucalyptus tree area is protected with a
split rail fence. The grove has no
permanent bathroom facility, but a couple smelly outhouses serve the urgent
needs of the thousands of visitors. As
with most such places, the outhouses are located right next to the heaviest
foot traffic, so if a sense of privacy is needed, forget it. Those with less urgent need who wish for
better facilities may hike through to a campground bathroom to the north.
A small trailer with a large window functions as a bookstore
and information center. The docents use
this as their headquarters. The docent
trailer makes $80,000 a year for the monarch program. Nearby is a circle of
benches where the docents give presentations twice a day. They set up telescopes that are focused on
the clusters and the docents make sure that no one touches the scopes so as to
keep them on target. The docents seem
knowledgeable, though some are more up to date than others.
The grove is right next to the busy Highway 1, which was
crowded with traffic, some of which being heavy trucks. On the other side of the highway was an
active rail track. During the hours we
were present, two, maybe three Amtrak trains passed by. The grove has only a handful of parking
spaces, so most people parked along the road in either direction as they found
space, and they have to negotiate their way across the traffic. There are no crosswalks. I spoke with two docents about this, and they
both had the same response. The California
transportation system owns the road, and the margin of the road, so the monarch
people are afraid that if they ask for crosswalks, “Caltrans” will punish them
by forbidding parking. They both said,
separately, that they only thing that will change the situation is if a “child
is killed.” Clearly this subject has
come up before and the docents have a ready answer. My response was to say that there was risk
either way. One on hand a risk that
someone will get killed, and on the other hand, a risk that Caltrans will be a
big butthole. I wouldn’t assume that
such an institution, one with the purpose of serving the public, would act that
way.
The site is far from pristine. What the monarch situation teaches is that
monarchs do not need pristine conditions in order to survive. Pristine and protected might be necessary for
them to flourish and thrive, however.
They are not likely to find those conditions everywhere in western California . But with 460 sites, as compared to the 20 in Mexico ,
it’s clear that monarchs are highly adaptable.
It makes me wonder if the decline in overwintering numbers both on
California and Mexico is due to the difficulty for humans in finding the sites,
meaning that there very well could be many more than 460 and 20. We certainly had difficulty in finding
clusters. Flying monarchs are much
easier to see, but they can be easily missed unless someone is looking for
them.
The story told by the park ranger at Lighthouse Field beach
certainly testifies to the monarch’s adaptability. Their traditional site was hostile with
attacking bluejays, and the butterflies moved south. Naturalists responded by putting up a few
signs and yellow tape and posting their docents.
There’s weird irony in the California monarch picture. So much of the thinking and conversation
about conservation centers on preserving the migration and the numbers. But in California
at least the migration may not be natural.
The reason is that it seems the overwintering butterflies depend upon eucalyptus,
which is not native at all. The tree originated
in Australia , was brought to
California
supposedly to produce lumber, blooms in the winter, and provides nectar. I wonder of the western migration occurred at
all prior to when the tree was introduced.
I’ll have to look into this more, to see if historical records give
evidence of the monarchs spending the winter in the region.
The public viewing groves for me are more like zoos. The monarchs are protected, as they should
be. But the setting is far from
ideal. I’d personally rather experience
the butterflies in wild places and apart from crowds of people, if it is all
possible. The public groves are a place
of intersection. They are where people
can see the monarchs without going to too much trouble, because most people
aren’t going to take a lot of trouble.
For them, visiting the monarch grove is one event of what is likely a
busy day with a number of goals, or destinations.
We, even visitors to the crowded groves, think of the
monarch migration as a wonderful, natural event or process, and it is. Quite possibly it’s been going on for
thousands of years. This seemingly
frail, small creature embarking upon and completing an epic journey while
encountering unthinkable obstacles. It’s
almost supernatural. For me it’s like
contemplating anything that resembles the eternal. Like gazing at the stars or a wild land or
seascape. When we take time for this,
when we allow our minds to rest in the vastness of the created universe, we
feel at home. We see that we have a
place. The troubles and conflicts of our
lives seem small in comparison, and from that perspective. We might feel cold and lonely with this
contemplation. And yet, I don’t. I feel at such times that I am part of the
eternal, and this gives me comfort.
Note: Part of our trip was to visit a relative who was dying. The relative, however, sustained an injury and died while we were looking for monarchs. We changed our homeward flight to be able to attend the memorial service.
