ON THE WINGS OF A BUTTERFLY Inspired by the migration path of the monarch butterfly, paraglider and filmmaker Benjamin Jordan sets out from Mexico to Canada to bring awareness to this endangered species BY TIONA EVERSOLE
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enjamin Jordan recalled the monarch butterfly of his youth. Growing up in eastern Canada, these butterflies known for their vibrant orange and black wings were a common sight: “If you told me to draw a butterfly, I would draw you a Monarch butterfly,” he said. “You see them all over the place.” In 2000 at the age of 24, Jordan began paragliding, but it wasn’t until a paragliding trip to Mexico in 2015 when Jordan came across the butterfly once more. While attempting to return to the starting point of a 50 kilometer flight, less-thanideal conditions caused Jordan to land in a pasture almost 10,000 feet above the sea. While packing up his glider, Jordan noticed something peculiar. The same butterflies from his youth were there, in Mexico, thousands of miles away from his home in British Columbia, Canada. “Before I knew it, there's literally millions of butterflies flying everywhere,” Jordan said. "All I can hear is the sound of millions and millions of butterfly wings flapping all around me. I'm totally taken aback — I had never seen anything like this.” After the encounter, Jordan returned to the place he was staying and shared his magical experience, learning from a few people that the butterflies had migrated from Canada to Mexico. Fascinated by this journey, Jordan began to research the migration path of the monarch butterfly. “They flew all the way to this specific mountain top, no bigger than the size of a schoolyard in Mexico,” explained Jordan. “But if that wasn't crazy enough, they've never been there before.”
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Often forced to scratch close to the hills, taking whatever miniscule lift Jordan can get, it's hard not to be distracted by the ever-changing colors and shapes of the mineral-rich Arizona landscape. photo by Benjamin Jordan S U M M E R
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