Four Wings and a Prayer (26 page)

When I blithely followed Lincoln Brower up that mountain in Mexico years ago, I had no idea I had come to a path I would still be traversing to this day. For this gift, especially, I am thankful, and for his scholarship and intellectual ardor, which he has generously shared with me over the years. Many others in the monarch community, both professional and amateur lepidopterists, were instrumental in trying to keep me on track, particularly Chip Taylor and the staff of Monarch Watch, Sandra Perez, Karen Oberhauser, Bob Pyle, Homero and Betty Aridjis, William Merwin, Monica Missrie, Richard Walton, Elizabeth Howard at Journey North, Don Davis, Paul Cherubini, Dan Petr, Dale Clayton, Ro Vaccaro, Steve Montgomery, John Stimson, David Marriott, Adrian Wenner, David Gibo, the late Ken Brugger, David Barkin, and Terry Callender and his students at Wamego High School. Bill Calvert stands alone. I am grateful that he let me go along for the ride, and for his wisdom, kindness, and (two sigmas above a seventeen-year-old’s) daring.

I am indebted, as well, to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, whose fellowship support was essential to this endeavor,
and to the echoing green and Blessing Way foundations, which found me at critical moments.

My editorial confreres over the years at
Double Take,
Robert Coles, Alex Harris, Rob Odom, and David Rowell, gave me the time and space to explore my growing preoccupation with monarch butterflies, as did Roger Cohn, who, first at
Audubon
and then at
Mother Jones,
supported this project from its inception, and Irene Schneider and Tom Wallace at
Condé Nast Traveler,
who flung me far afield.

Thanks, always, to Dan Frank at Pantheon, who got it, stayed with it, and made it better, and to my patient, farsighted friend Gloria Loomis and her assistant Katherine Faussett at the Watkins-Loomis Agency. Thanks, too, to Rebecca Wilson at Weidenfeld and Nicolson in England, and to Abner Stein, who put me in her care.

The unfailing encouragements of Sara Rimer and Nicky Dawidoff were inestimable, as were the guidance and help of Barbara Epstein, John Elder, Francine Prose, Edward Hirsch, Harriet Barlow, Jane Mayer, Tony Horwitz, Geraldine Brooks, Terry and Brooke Williams, Shawn Leary, Michael Considine, Sam and Lisa Verhovek, David Goldfarb, Lisa Saiman, Kathy and Gary Wilson, Joan Reynolds, Russell Puschak, Kate Gardner, Jackie and Nick Avignon, Joanne Rizzi, Diane Willow, Sally Jacobs, Ellen Fitzpatrick, Michael Dabroski, Lisa Spilde, Liz Phillips, Susan Mintz, Bill Jaeger, Amanda Smith-Socaris, Linda Motzkin, Jonathan Rubenstein, Nancy Dreyer, Gabriel Dreyer, and Joan Koffman.

My fellow trustees of the Town of Johnsburg Library, as well as the library’s remarkable staff, kept me in books and good cheer, while Jenna Stauffer and the students of the Wilderness Community School in Johnsburg, New York, and Robin Gunn and Jill Ferraresso’s Y2K Explorers’ Class at the Atrium School in Watertown, Massachusetts—Ben Adams-Keane, Ali Broad-stone, Esther Brown, Axelle Derviscevic, Tamara Ivanovic, Briana Karman, Sophie McKibben, Miles Powell, Ivy Olcott, Lily Moore, Etta Resnick-Field, Max Newman, Brennan Robbins, Michael Slonina, Lucien Swetshinski, and Emma Wulf—kept me on my toes.

Thanks beyond words to Bill for his love, care, and constancy, and to his parents and mine for theirs. This book is dedicated to two keen observers of natural phenomena, Sophie and Barley, who have shown me so much.