I will try to live up to my blog subheading “Philosophical Photography & More,” at least in part today, by recounting the events of this morning…
My wife, Michelle, is an artist who was finishing a watercolor for entry into a local art exhibition today, along the theme of “clean slate.” For this she produced an image of a Monarch butterfly emerging from its cocoon, entitled “Rebirth” which she asked me to frame.

I asked her for details of the work and uploaded it to her online gallery but, in doing so, I noticed that today’s Google Doodle also featured a butterfly design.

That’s odd, I thought, and clicked the link to find that today is the 41st anniversary of the discovery by Ken Brugger and Catalina Trail of the Mountain of Butterflies, and more specifically Monarch butterflies. After many years of searching and tracking Monarch butterflies this spectacular site in Mexico was finally discovered on January 9th 1975 (although it was well known by locals for hundreds of years). The site has now been made a World Heritage site where over one billion of these lepidopteran beauties spend the winter.

So, back to the main point of this post: a close friend of mine who is considerably more spiritually inclined than I would ever admit to being, would probably say this is fate, the gods, or the universe sending a message to either me or my wife, or perhaps to us both. Maybe this is a sign that heralds a metamorphic change for us. Who knows, only time will tell…

Personally, I just say “wow, that’s weird” and let it pass, but it certainly makes for a mildly interesting story. What do you think?

~Richard