The Fourth Instar

"What am I doing here? Wendi glared in disgust as he slowly began to dig the crumbly earth. The ground was surprisingly soft and light and without any heavy rocks or stones. More like dust than dirt, Rendi thought. He looked across to the barren plain of stone left by the missing mountain. 'I guess all the stone is there.'" – Lin, Starry River






8.

Crandall's father had learned long ago in his field research that pollinators such as the Monarch butterfly would need assistance from people if they were to continue their great generational migration from the sacred fir forests of Mexico all the way up to Canada.  When you worked in fields and along roadsides for a living, many things didn't come as a surprise. Monarchs were losing their ground, literally. They were a more delicate creature than many knew. There had been a time when the Monarch could have wintered in relative peace in the great warmth of the fir and then, over several life spans, made their way north up long and continuous corridors of welcoming habitat. Butterflies need nectaring plants and eventually must settle onto milkweed to begin the process of transforming from egg to adult butterfly.  But milkweed is often gotten rid of.  It is mowed down, it is replaced by lots for houses or large business that so often form at the outskirts of large cities and turn what was once an easy stopping ground for butterflies into nothing but cement.  This was not a new story but what was a new story was the decline of Monarch numbers both in Mexico and migrating northward.  Crandall's father decided that he would test his theories of recreating such a corridor of hospitable migration of butterflies by restoring a field of his own. He wanted to see if when he replanted an old cornfield with wildflowers and milkweed, if the Monarchs would seek it out as a safe zone.  If so, could he begin the long process of recreating an interlinking corridor, state by state, expanding south and north? He sat in the upper deck of his small boat he had named Starla, after his daughter, and pondered these same questions.  First, his own field must succeed, then to sell his idea to state agencies, maybe cross the nation.  He looked out over the shoreline of Lake Monona and scanned the small crowd at the beach quickly but didn't see Crandall. The park was very large. He set on his boat to scan the shoreline.