Photograph by Marty Davis
MARTY DAVIS is known as “the butterfly lady.” Every summer, she raises monarchs for a cause near and dear to her heart, the annual butterfly release on the last day of Camp Healing Tree, which is Sunday, August 18, this year. “Butterflies are such magical creatures, just beautiful, and there’s so much symbolism there,” Davis says.
The three-day camp is administered by Brooke’s Place, which provides counseling and support for children ages 7–17 grieving the loss of a loved one. Brooke’s Place is named for Brooke Wright, whose father Tom died when American Eagle Flight 4184 crashed in Roselawn, Indiana, in 1994.
Davis, now 67, knows the pain of traumatic loss. When she was 12, her father died by suicide. “I was a bereaved child,” she says. “I never had the kind of support the camp offers to children today.”
Photograph by Mary Milz
Anne Ryder, a former TV journalist who now teaches at Indiana University, is also “part of the club no one wants to be in.” When Ryder was 15, her mother passed away. Later, she lost her son at 5-and-a-half months gestation age.
Ryder has helped Davis raise butterflies for years and shares her own journey with grief during the camp’s closing memorial service honoring loved ones. “The message is, ‘It gets better,’ but there will be things that bring grief back,” she says. “It’s OK to cry and to look for signs everywhere that love never dies … and if you pay attention, you’ll find comfort, usually in nature.”
Camp Healing Tree director Val Hagerty says the closing ceremony, which includes reciting the names of participants’ loved ones before the butterflies are released, is powerful. She says some of the butterflies land on campers before taking to the sky. “The emotion is like, This is my person coming to say hello or touch me,” Hagerty says. “It’s just a special moment to have that connection again with a person that’s gone.”
While the annual release usually includes anywhere from 50 to 100-plus butterflies, this year there are just 11. That’s despite Davis spending many more days in search of monarch eggs on milkweed plants, their only food source. She can’t help but wonder if climate change has something to do with it.
Photograph by Mary Milz
Wendy Caldwell with the Monarch Joint Venture in Minnesota says it’s hard to know. While the International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists monarchs as “vulnerable,” Caldwell says the population can vary from place to place. “In my part of the world, we see monarchs daily and feel good about it,” she says. But she also notes that ongoing threats—including “the variables of climate change, pesticide use, and loss of habitat”—are real.
Davis says she’s done all she can to keep her 11 transitioning butterflies healthy and ready for takeoff. But whether it’s 100 monarchs taking flight or 11, there’s still power and hope in their journey.
Photograph by Marty Davis
These monarchs belong to the migratory generation that will travel 2,000 miles to the mountains of Central Mexico, where they’ll winter, and return to the southern U.S. in late March/early April to breed, lay eggs, and die, providing life for the next generation.
It’s a journey not lost on those sending them off. These beautiful creatures are delicate and fragile but also strong and determined. Ryder says their transition from egg, to caterpillar, to chrysalis, and finally to butterfly is the perfect metaphor for death. The monarch “is in its darkest place before it busts out its wings,” she says, “which is the miracle of camp: busting down the doors that grief brings.”
Photograph by Marty Davis
