Sometimes we need to distract ourselves from cancer when we can.   From the treatment, the chemo, the lab tests and scans, and maybe even those around us who seem to just focus on our cancer now.

I’ve always found peace (and God!) in nature, when I’m out in the woods.  When I look at how nature works, it’s magical.

I wanted the butterfly for our logo as I used to raise monarch butterflies, from eggs!   I’m kind of passionate about butterflies!

I’d follow monarchs around at parks or in wooded areas and watch them land on milkweed leaves.  Then I’d find  one egg  it laid the back of a milkweed leave.  Here’s a picture (not my pics, from the net!)

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I’d bring the egg home with lots of milkweed leaves, and put it all in a 5 gallon aquarium or very big jar and watch the eggs hatch. I’d watch the caterpillars grow. (I had to get new leaves about every other day.)   They shed their skin as they grow larger.

       

One day, they have a fine piece of silk they secrete and they hang from the end of a branch or twig in the jar, and after awhile, their skins splits open and they just look like a gooey mess.  Their head and all of their skin falls off.  But a few minutes later, they are a beautiful chrysalis!  Below is a time lapse video of the process.

About 10 days after the chrysalis forms, it becomes clear and you can see the butterfly inside.  Shortly after it becomes clear, the butterfly emerges.

Watching the life from egg to butterfly was always a very profound  for me.  Most of the life of the caterpillar is very limited.   It only searches for leaves, eats and grows.  I has many legs but moves very slowly.   When I look at the whole field of flowers and trees, I think of the tiny view of the caterpillar.  Just the few milkweed plants in it’s very small circle of life.  It really has no freedom, doesn’t really seem to do anything for enjoyment.  It loses everything, it dies.  It’s head falls off and it’s skin falls off, and it just appears to become a blob of nothing. Does it understand that that is not the end of their life?

But to wait and watch, see the chrysalis form and see the butterfly emerge is amazing.   Usually the butterfly will stay in my finger until it’s wings dry, and then it takes off!  Now it is free and can travel great distances and see the world from so many different views.  It’s is beautiful and it can FLY!!  And it flies to beautiful flowers to drink sweet nectar.   In the end it travels up to 3000 miles following an instinctual path and it meets up with thousands of other monarchs in Mexico.

It reminds me that in this life we can be very limited, but one day, like the monarchs, we too will will be beautiful and free with an unlimited realm.  And we will be able to meet with so many others who have also become free!

I’ve raised enough monarchs I’ve gotten to see every stage of development.  It’s amazing to watch!

Hope I didn’t bore you with this, but think of it when you see our butterfly logo!!