This story aired in the April 24, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
Every year, the western monarch butterfly migrates from the coast between Santa Cruz and San Diego to spend the summer along rivers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Then, in winter, they do the whole thing again, in reverse.
Millions of these butterflies used to make the thousand mile trek. But climate change, industrialized agriculture, and ever-expanding suburbs have made this migration difficult. Because the monarch caterpillars only eat one thing: milkweed. And it’s not around like it once was.
Without plentiful milkweed along their migration path, monarchs have nowhere to lay their eggs. Now, only thousands butterflies make it back to the coast each year.
When one musician heard about the plight of the monarchs, he decided to take a radical step to help them along their journey… by taking the trip with them.
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STORY TRANSCRIPT:
REPORTER: Alex Wand is standing in a grove of Monterey pines and eucalyptus trees in Santa Cruz.
MUSICIAN ALEX WAND: Here we are at Natural Bridges State Park. This is where the monarchs overwinter.
REPORTER: It’s August 2020. Right now, the monarchs are in their summer breeding grounds, stretching inland to the Rocky Mountains. But in a few months, these trees will be one of the places along the California Coast where western monarch butterflies wait out the winter.
ALEX: Two weeks ago, I came right to this map.
REPORTER: The map shows the monarch migration route with a big red arrow pointing between the Pacific Northwest and the California coast. It’s a route that desperately needs more milkweed.
ALEX: I came to this map and this gave me the idea for my next bike trip.
REPORTER: The arrow spans more than a thousand miles. The monarchs make this journey by flying fifty to a hundred miles a day, which is how far Alex can bike in a day. The math works out. Alex could pack his camping gear, his guitar and synths, and join the fall migration for a month, planting milkweed as he goes.
ALEX: I just loved the idea of doing something so out of left field for another species.
REPORTER: By scattering the fluffy-tailed seeds in the fall, Alex hopes the milkweed will grow in time for the spring migration, so the spring butterflies can spot the plant’s white, pink, and purple flowers, and lay their eggs.
ALEX: It was almost like a calling, like a vocation or something. I felt like I had to do it.
REPORTER: Instead of "Johnny Appleseed" he’ll be "Alex Milkweed-seed."
A few weeks later, on September 4th, Alex hops a train to Spokane, Washington, and starts biking south. Besides planting milkweed, the purpose of Alex's migration is to connect with the monarchs’ experience, and make music inspired by their journey.
At least once a day, Alex stops to record the sounds around him with specialized microphones. He uploads these recordings, and the electroacoustic music he makes, to his website: MonarchWaystationSoundMap.com. That’s where all of the sounds and music in this story come from.
Each upload also includes a short journal entry, which he read for me.
ALEX: Showy Milkweed is going to be a big player in this project as it’s a type of milkweed that’s native to all the ecoregions I’ll be passing through.
REPORTER: From Spokane, Alex bikes south along backroads when possible, and highways like I-5 when it’s unavoidable. Once a day he stops to make a new milkweed waystation. He digs up a small patch of soil, and plants the milkweed seeds he’s collected. Then he surrounds the new waystation with rocks, laid out in a triangle. The triangle is like a wordless sigil, telling other passers by "tread carefully. protect these sprouts."
A week after starting, Alex makes it to Hermiston, Oregon. He stops at the Umatilla River to plant a waystation.
ALEX: Umatilla is the name of the Native American nation who lived along this river. In 1855 they were forced to surrender their homelands.
Biking through endless acres of monocrop wheat fields, I'm seeing how these rivers play a vital role in the agriculture industry around these parts.
REPORTER: Monocrops are often treated with pesticides that either kill the milkweed, or turn its leaves and nectar into poison that kills the baby caterpillars.
ALEX: Well, here's a few seeds to hopefully counter these entwined histories of exploitation.
REPORTER: It’s September 10th and Alex is on track to reach Natural Bridges in another three weeks.
But the next day, he’s reminded just how precarious the monarchs’ journey can be.
ALEX: The town of Heppner has been shrouded by a thick layer of smoke. I encountered the same in Pasco when I woke up to my tent being covered in ash. Upon biking into town, I found out that I was cycling through 600+ AQI.
REPORTER: Over a dozen wildfires are burning across Oregon, destroying the monarchs’ food and habitats.
ALEX: My thoughts and prayers are with the people and critters suffering from these historic fires. Buena suerte con la migración, monarcas, y nos vemos en Santa Cruz!
REPORTER: It’s not safe for Alex to continue the migration, so he takes a train home, and hopes the monarchs can make it on their own.
A few months later, in December, Alex visits Natural Bridges to see how many monarchs made it through the fires.
NATURAL BRIDGES VISITOR: Have you seen any clusters?
ALEX: No I haven't unfortunately.
REPORTER: Monarchs cluster together for warmth. Tens of thousands of monarchs can gather on the same tree, covering it up. With their wings folded, they look like little triangular brownish orange leaves.
VISITOR: I came 3 years ago and there were 9,000 and they said this year there's only 500ish. So the numbers are really dwindling.
REPORTER: 500 was the lowest count ever recorded at Natural Bridges. That's not enough to cover even a branch.
But the western monarchs didn’t give up. They migrated in the spring as always, and many more came back the next year. Alex didn’t give up either. In 2022, two years after his first attempt, Alex tries again.
On September 18th, Alex starts the migration in Whitefish, Montana.
ALEX: I was worried because it was grizzly bear territory.
And I actually did have a bear encounter. I was biking uphill and I looked to my right and there's a bear. I hear this gnarly growl. And then I just “shoom!” I just jet! Uphill, though.
REPORTER: Shaken, but unscathed, Alex continues biking west across Idaho.
ALEX: I was getting just flat tire after flat tire. And it was a nightmare.
REPORTER: Then he turns south into Washington
ALEX: You're biking on the side of the road. You know, you're biking on these margins, this thin little shoulder. There's always the risk of getting hit by a car.
REPORTER: Cars sometimes hit monarchs, too.
ALEX: For a monarch butterfly it's not an easy thing to migrate. If you look at a monarch overwintering, who's gone through the journey, they're not fresh as a daisy. They're all tattered.
So, it's a hard journey for them, too. Feeling some of that difficulty is also part of the trip.
REPORTER: Finally, Alex rejoins the path he’d taken through Oregon two years earlier.
ALEX: The weather is just hot as hell, and I was discouraged because I went to the same place I did the year prior, but I didn't see any milkweed growth. So I was like, ack, my work!
REPORTER: But he does spot milkweed around some of his other waystations, and that’s enough for Alex – and the monarchs – to keep going.
ALEX: At the end of the day, it's a glorious feeling to make it to wherever you're going to spend the night and just having all the sweat and just like all the effort you put in that day and resting,
REPORTER: Alex continues biking south through Oregon, past where he had to quit last time because of the fires.
On October 14th, he makes it to the Siskiyou Mountains which stretch from Southern Oregon to Northern California.
ALEX: Beautiful. Very verdant and mountainous. I mean, it's one of the most biodiverse landscapes in the country.
REPORTER: Alex stops to plant milkweed in the Siskiyou Pass, just north of the California border. It’s late in the day, the sun is going down, and he’s next to a steep slope, almost like a cliff.
ALEX: And high grade is great because no lawnmowers were going to go there. So that's a good spot to plant. And it was a windy day, and I had the milkweed seeds that I harvested from Ashland or something. They still had the cotton-like, feathery connection to the seed. So this particular waystation was a little more dispersed than my other ones
REPORTER: As milkweed floats down the slope on the wind, Alex remembers something he'd read before he left. It's an account by a naturalist named Lucia Shepardson from 1914, where she talks about what the migration looked like in this exact spot a hundred years ago.
ALEX: It's described as this 50 foot wide band of all these monarchs migrating together over the Siskiyou Pass. And you just don't see that anymore.
REPORTER: What was it like when you went?
Alex: I didn't see any monarchs. They’re sort of like ghosts, migrating along with me.
REPORTER: Alex finishes scattering the milkweed seeds. Then he continues biking south into California. Alone. Like most of the monarchs making the trip these days.
Six days later, Alex is biking through the rice fields of the Central Valley when he sees a massive flock of birds overhead. Usually he avoids planting next to crops, but Alex feels like the V of the birds is an arrow telling him: “plant here!”
So he stops. And plants the milkweed. He learns later that rice fields are an important “surrogate” wetland for milkweed and migrating butterflies.
ALEX: I think it's about finding the magic in your life, you know, and letting things like the V of birds compel you to action.
REPORTER: On October 22nd, five weeks after he started, Alex pedals into Santa Cruz. He bikes straight to Natural Bridges — doesn’t even go home first to take a shower. He sits in the Eucalyptus grove watching and listening.
ALEX: I just looked up and I saw the monarchs. It's always an amazing feeling.
REPORTER: That year, almost 5,000 monarchs made it through the winter at Natural Bridges.
REPORTER: Alex has now migrated with the monarchs four times. He’s even inspired other musicians to make the migration, tending the waystations with him and creating music along the journey. His dream is for people throughout California, and nearby states, to plant milkweed locally, in their yards and community gardens.
This winter, 2,000 monarchs made it to Natural Bridges. It’s the second lowest count on record. But the ones that made it– they found milkweed, laid eggs, and right now this next generation is migrating north, looking for a waystation to rest.
Some of them might be flying over Siskiyou Pass right now, that same Siskiyou Pass, where Alex’s seeds floated down a slope in 2022. The last time Alex made the migration, he stopped at that slope. It was covered in milkweed.
Note: Alex turned his way-station soundings and music into an album called "Spectre," as well as a documentary. To learn more — and to add your own milkweed way-station or sounding — visit MonarchWaystationSoundMap.com
