Whilst a circle of friends was celebrating the birthday in question yesterday, I went for a walk in Natural Bridges State Park. To my surprise parking this Saturday was free, which really means nothing but still…I parked close to the Monarch trail. A trail that leads through a little meadow holding an immense population of the Monarch-butterfly, a large beautiful speciment of a butterfly, this danaus plexippus.
The western population winters along the coast of Texas, California, and in Mexico, and return to the north in spring. Monarch butterflies follow the same migration patterns every year. During migration, huge numbers of butterflies can be seen gathered together. And this is one spot. Thousands and thousands.
Most predators have learned that the monarch butterfly makes a poisonous snack. The toxins from the monarch's milkweed diet have given the butterfly this defense. In either the caterpillar or butterfly stage the monarch needs no camouflage because it takes in toxins from the milkweed and is poisonous to predators.

From the meadow I walked on to the beach, which lie like a bay in the bay – a cove. It was a specific low tide which means you can hike about two miles on the rugged limestone cliffs. That its, its like a sidewalk that takes you two miles out parallel to the ocean. The cliffs are beautiful, scattered pattens of fossils millions of years old. The tidepools thoúgh are the most staggering sight out here. Big holes in the rockhard ground, they form a surface that looks like the moon, houndreds of little tidepools, each with a little biological reality going on. The larger pools with starfishs and sea-anemonis. It’s a walk like this that leaves you numb.And then at the endgoal of my hike, where the rocks plunge into the ocean and you can go no further, a large group of people were taking family snapshots with the setting sun as background. I sat down to enjoy the sun race to the dawn on the other side of the world to rise with the hangovers of my friends, when I heard them talk.
More russians.

the beauty:
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/chf/pub/surveyreports/sep-oct99/monarch.gif