Metamorphosis

Out of Guadalajara, Jalisco, and in to Michoacan. Closer to the heart, colder to the core.

Lake Patzcuaro has been calling me for a while.

Legend paints a place where the barrier between heaven and earth is thin. I can't explain the feeling but I am sure there is someone there I have to meet.

Dan's van is going to Morelia. When I look on the map, Morelia's proximity to Patzcuaro sends a jolt of electricity through my body and once again I feel in the flow of something far stronger than me.

"Vamonos!" And so we find ourselves, crawling south.

Dan drives his van with all the enthusiasm of a Canadian on a road full of crazy drivers, Moses the husky perched zen-like behind him, Catia the newly-arrived Toronto lass, glued to the passenger window. We stop for the night at a town that begins with M, chosen by vote with map-pointed fingers.

These towns are like secrets, existing, bustling, swarming under the camoflage of anonymity. There is no way you'd see this Mexico with your head in the Lonely Planet. The square conceals millions of birds, who paint the pavement white and screech in stereo sound loud enough to raise our voices.

Catia and I share a room that sneers in spinach green. We awake early, too cold to shower. The morning mist hangs expectantly.


Our destination is one of the four butterfly reserves playing host to millions of Monarch mariposas on their winter flight from Canada. Every year, they return to the same place.

It takes them five weeks to fly down here. It will take them three generations to fly back.


The eternally moving circle of life.


The journey is lined with ranches and shacks, weathered farmers waiting patiently for lifts. Their sombreros shine whitely in the morning glow. Horses trudge their way up pine-clad slopes. Sun tints yellow, clouds wash grey.


Now we are in Austria. Only the cacti and clamouring billboards give it away.


My journey is blissful. I hug my knees on Dan's bed, a back-of-the-van secret. From time to time Moses stands, turns, sits heavily once again; dancing to my reggae soundtrack. Why does "Eastenders" exist and yet "Vehicle Windows Around the World" does not? I sink back into the pillows and lean my forehead against the glass.

We pull off onto a dirt road and find ourselves at a square of coloured shacks, steaming with woodsmoke, where children surround the van, asking for pesos. I hand out hula hoops to squeals of self-conscious giggling.


We eat our breakfast next to a fire tended by a four year old with a runny nose. She gives us cinnamon coffee that has been boiling, bitterly, on a metal plate over the embers. We clothe Catia, who smilingly admits to having arrived entirely unequipped for anything other than Toronto life, and start walking, accompanied by a tanned, toothless guide named Salvador.


We fail to follow his lisping dialogue. The wrinkles in his face tell me the stories I want to hear.

The sun filters through the pines to illuminate fallen trunks; clues to February's uncharacteristic storms. Salvador mumbles about floods and mudslides.

It wouldn't take much to cut the village off from everything.

In contrast to much of the world's broadly blind denial of change, the Mexicans seem to know something is up. Rather than 'global warming', many seem to accept that we are on a time scale told to us thousands of years ago. I have met some people who say, with no shred of doubt, that next year will see snow in this country.


Rare is the Mexican house that is closed to the elements. If it snows, millions of people will die.


I don't want to believe it and yet the rains of the last month have rested heavy on my shoulders, coming down hard and unwelcome in the middle of the historic dry season.

For now, the sun continues to shine on the delicate black veins and saffron-dusted wings of the butterfly carcasses that have begun to litter the path; dappled warning of vulnerable slumber. They exist in a comatose state for weeks, shutting down completely until the sun is warm enough to wake them.

Salvador points up to huge dark pendulums in the trees, like giant wasp nests. Our eyes adjust like we've walked into a dark room and it takes a moment to realise these are all butterflies, wings closed, awaiting the sun's touch. Focus more and tune into entire trunks, covered in wings.


The valley hums in orange.


Dan and Catia take off with their cameras and I lie back in a patch of sunlight to look straight up at the canopy.

I never thought I'd appreciate the fact that someone stole my camera last month. But I am grateful now for the chance to simply sit and absorb.

Butterflies drift as if by accident. Scraps of orange tissue, blown in the breeze.

I close my eyes and join them, feeding off the warmth of dusty beams, fluttering my joy at the world.

These butterflies have flown almost as far as me.

I am learning to read nature. The transparency of its messages is surprising. Butterflies are a theme that has been following me for weeks. They represent change.


I am glad I am with Dan and Catia. A strange trio we make; each of us is in our own state of metamorphosis. Dan still coping with the hole his girlfriend left behind, but plowing eagerly on through his mindblowing, fated journey. Catia, dressed in mournful black and shaking with the shock of leaving her life, testing out her new legs and the arch of her wings.


Me, finding my feet and so much more. Undergoing change and preparing for more. Not only am I flying right now, but in my flight I am preparing to let go of my solo venture when Michael joins me at the beginning of March. I am simultaneously nervous and exploding with excitement. Either way, letting someone else in is enormous. It is not just the change of travelling state but the mental upheaval of entering a relationship.


I feel other, deeper shifts. I wonder who I will meet in Patzcuaro.

Like the butterfly, I will soon be released from my self-constructed cocoon; different shape, same being.

All three of us are butterflies, emerging from our pods. Wobbling on legs we didn't have before. Waving antennae in pine scents. Flying away.

We return to find children still hula hooping. I play with them for an hour or so, encouraging the shy ones and exclaiming at the progress of the new professionals. I keep catching sight of the joy on their faces and laughing because it is me that has put that there.

When we leave I gift them my blue and yellow hoop. I have carried this hoop with me for three months, purely to lend to children, for everywhere I go there is a child who wants to learn.

I will need a new one for them now. But it feels right to leave it here.

The resulting light in their faces illuminates the way ahead.