Butterflies Get Sick and Die: A Hangover in Belize and Kingsolver's New Book

It's Katherine today.

I finished Barbara Kingsolver's new book, Flight Behavior, about an hour ago.  It's about butterflies.  I want to write about it, but I'm not sure if I want to recommend the book.  That's odd because I love Kingsolver stuff.  It's hard for me to know if my problem with this book is actually the book or if it's my personal baggage getting in the way.

Given my ambivalence, I think I'll begin by describing an unlikely night of drinking tamarind juice and copious amounts of vodka in a jungle preserve in Belize about five years ago.  I have butterfly baggage and it starts there.

We were with Bud and Janet Simmons at a place called Five Sisters near the Mayan ruins that straddle the border of Belize and Guatemala.  The day before we'd done two flights and a bus ride from Belize City to the National Preserve and the resort there with our lodging.   The final leg of the journey included a stint on a nightmarish dirt road in a van with suspension issues where we covered 17 miles in two hours.  When we arrived and had our mediocre dinner, I'd been really put off by my cocktail before dinner because the tonic mixer was pink and a pink gin and tonic just seemed wrong.  Exhausted after the day, we'd gone to our cool thatched huts and slept.

The next morning we headed out to the ruins.  It was my first such experience and I was transformed by the magic of the past.  The only memory that interrupts the joy of this day is my mental photo of the army folks who guarded us up the final part of the road to the ruins and the  multiple guards with assault weapons strapped on and roaming the ruins with the tourists.  Our guide told us nasty Guatemalan bandits liked to rob tourists and to steal a plant used to tint American money it's special green color.  Mostly the ruins were wonderful and I learned you can change the colors of begonia petals if you hold a flame to them.  Who knew?

On the way back to the resort, we stopped and played in a river with a waterfall and had a small picnic. There was a big cave we stopped and looked at as well.  There are lots of ruins and caves and playful water spots to investigate in Belize.  It was a good day.  The guides loved our foursome and at the end of the day, one handed me a jug of the tamarind juice we'd had with lunch.  With a wink, he told me it was good with vodka.

For me, it was a day to celebrate.  My world had expanded and I knew I'd be checking out Mayan ruins in future trips.  It's hard to explain when something happens to you and the world is a different place afterwards.  It was that kind of day for me.

The four of us gathered in one of our thatched huts and had one of those wonderful evenings that good friends have when they've shared something new with each other.  We sat and relived our day and ate canned peanuts and drank.  The boys drank beer--Belikans--awful stuff, but all that was available.  Janet drank something, but with restraint.  I drank lots and lots of vodka and tamarind juice.  It went down so easily and it had been such a good day.  I no longer eat or drink anything with tamarind juice.

The next morning was horrible beyond belief.  We had tours set up and we were going no matter what. The details of my morning can be imagined.  With a head I thought would never stop hurting and a stomach that I hoped could take the long dirt road trip involved, we headed off for a canoe trip through burial caves conveniently located on the river's path.  The caves creeped me out because I felt awful, my headlamp stopped working shortly after we entered the several mile-long first cave, and I'd been reading this really scary book about caves called The Descent.  I was a shaky horrible mess at the end.

We got back in our van and headed for the next event with a picnic planned close by.  We bumped to the butterfly farm and a spread of fried chicken and Cokes was waiting.  Heaven.  I don't know why, but fried foods or Mexican food is what heals sometimes.  An hour in the jungle shade with greasy food and sugar and no movement and I was myself again.

And now I finally get to why I'm telling this story.  The butterfly farm.  I think the word "farm" was hyperbolic.  There was a small enclosure of chicken wire filled with very colorful butterflies.  That was it.

We entered the constantly moving enclosure with a guide who spoke minimal English; Janet was our best hope at Spanish and her shopping vocabulary wasn't getting us far.  We are teachers though and we ask questions and we want to learn.  There is no point of being trapped in a butterfly "farm" with butterflies crawling all over you unless you learn from the experience.

We asked many questions, but our language-limited guide had only one answer to ALL questions:  "The butterflies will get sick and die."

What happens if a butterfly escapes the enclosure?  "The butterfly will get sick and die."
What happens if I touch a butterfly?  "The butterfly will get sick and die."
How often does a butterfly mate?  "The butterfly will get sick and die."
Do these butterflies migrate in the wild?  "The butterfly will get sick and die."

You get the idea.  To this day the four of us cannot respond to any butterfly spotting of any description without a verbal or mental reaction:  The butterfly will get sick and die.

So here I am and I've just finished Flight Behavior--a book that is ultimately about butterflies.  It even has a butterfly guide as a minor character.  I'm not sure I would have finished the book if I wasn't such a Puritan about reading books--I mean, a girl is supposed to finish what she starts.  I knew from the moment I realized the book was about butterflies, and not birds or bats for instance, that butterflies would get sick and die.  And sure enough, they do.  Lots of them.  In fact, that's the point of the book.  The climate is killing the monarch butterflies.  The species is getting sick and it could die.

The tragedies of climate change in the biological world are many and Kingsolver turns a real Mexican butterfly catastrophe into a fictional possibility where she can set up a battle between Appalachian religious folks and a wonderful butterfly scientist trying to figure out why the monarchs stopped to hibernate in West Virginia one winter when the Mexican possibility no longer existed.

Dellarobia is the primary character who is a central metaphor for butterflies as well.  Dellarobia married the wrong man (too young and pregnant) and is trapped in a future that she doesn't see as hers.  The book begins with her flight from it.  All the characters are fleeing and only Byron Ovid (our intrepid, but very cool, butterfly scientist) and the bland local preacher, Bobby Ogle, seem to stand up to save the butterfly-laden trees that Dellarobia's relatives want to log so they can pay their bills.  Dellarobia needs to migrate herself.  She has two kids, a lug of a husband, and she's discovered she's good at science and wants to learn.  Will she fly, which is really her only way to fight?  And that is the point of the book.  Sometimes that animal instinct to fight or flee in a dangerous situation is a lot more confusing than we think.  Flight can be the fight.  Ok.  Got it and I think I would have figured it out without the message (almost in capital letters) n the last pages of the book.

Though Kingsolver books are big on character and short on action in general, this one is more so.  I learned a lot about tracking butterflies and what butterflies look like and behave like when they are hibernating--they hang on clumps on trees.  I learned that religious folk in the Appalachians don't think the climate is changing--oh really?  I watched the characters flee in numerous directions and fight the wrong things and I watched Dellarobia learn not to run by running away.  It's one of the few books that the end of marriage and family and floodwaters destroying things seemed the best possibility.  I suspect the ending might be worth the effort for someone slogging through a really tough divorce and trying to find a new and better migration for the future.

In a while I will know if this book sticks.  It might.  I'm doubting it though.  Kingsolver's last book, The Lacuna, is among my favorites and it just won't go away from my head or heart.  I'm pretty sure, however, that Flight Behavior, like butterflies, will just get sick and die and I won't remember much of anything in a year.