A Heep of Everything: When Wings Remember

About Alexandra Heep:

Alexandra Heep is a longtime writer, chronic over-thinker, and recovering content mill survivor. Her work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, and online platforms where words are still respected. She writes children’s books, health reflections, and the occasional blog post laced with humor and hard-won honesty. After years of illness, detours, and navigating the noise of modern wellness, she returned to writing with the firm belief that stories—like people—don’t have to be perfect to matter. She publishes under multiple pen names and drinks more goat milk than you’d expect.

Friday, October 31, 2025

When Wings Remember

Monarchs, Migration, and Día de los Muertos

Every fall, as pumpkins ripen and shadows stretch long, another kind of migration begins — not of ghosts, but of wings. Monarch butterflies set off on their epic journey to Mexico, arriving just as families prepare altars for Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). To many, it feels less like coincidence and more like choreography — as if the spirits ride home on the air itself.

I recently met one of these travelers by accident. At a sunflower farm, one a golden afternoon end of August 2025, a monarch landed on my hand. I startled, of course — who expects grace to choose them? The butterfly lifted, unbothered, and landed just a few feet away on a sunflower, turning back as if to say, It’s all right. You just forgot you have wings, too.

I took photos with my humble cell phone, all the ones you see with this post (unedited except for the cover picture), But the memory became something more — a reminder that the strongest creatures often arrive in fragile packages.

🧡 Monarch Magic

Most monarchs live only two to six weeks — long enough to mate, lay eggs, and continue the cycle. But the fourth generation, the one born near the end of summer, is different. These are the “Methuselah generation,” the long-lived travelers who can survive up to eight months. They’re the ones who migrate thousands of miles south, from Canada and the northern U.S. all the way to the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico. There, clustered together like living jewels, they rest and wait for spring to call them home again.

💀 Where Science Meets Spirit

In Mexico, it’s said that monarchs carry the souls of ancestors returning to visit loved ones. The timing is uncanny — they arrive around late October, right before Día de los Muertos. While scientists explain it as temperature and daylight cues, I prefer to think it’s something grander: a conversation between worlds, spoken in orange and black.

🌻 A Personal Migration

That day at the sunflower farm, the monarch reminded me that endurance doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it’s a soft landing after a long flight. Sometimes it’s choosing to stay near — even when startled away.

Like them, I’ve had to journey far in fragile form, learning that resilience and gentleness aren’t opposites; they’re wings of the same body.

This Halloween, while others display their carved pumpkins and tell ghost stories, I’ll be thinking of those tiny travelers — and of how life, death, and rebirth all share the same sky.