Over the course of a year, monarch butterflies make a massive journey of thousands of miles, from places like Canada through the United States, down into Mexico and then back again. But, as per Wikipedia, “No individual butterfly completes the entire round trip…Four generations are involved in the annual cycle…” While the journey south occurs in a single generation (this generation of butterflies has a much longer lifespan than the others), the migration north is multiple generations. Ultimately though, the monarch butterfly round trip journey is a multigenerational one, with no single butterfly returning to the origin of this journey.
In generation ship stories, the children of the ship play with models of the engines. Algal food protocols are conserved through nursery songs. The walls are painted with murals of the history of the ship and the future it was built for. All these things are too important to be left only to classroom instruction. The same is true in our own lives. Whatever is most important should be before our eyes and knit into our bones."
I knew about the monarch migration broadly, but not the wonderful fact of it being more generations to return than to go south!
During the earlier parts of covid, I wrote a little for Breaking Ground on how to live with a generation ship mindset, including this: https://breakingground.us/all-aboard-the-generation-ship/
"Weave Essential Knowledge into All Parts of Life
In generation ship stories, the children of the ship play with models of the engines. Algal food protocols are conserved through nursery songs. The walls are painted with murals of the history of the ship and the future it was built for. All these things are too important to be left only to classroom instruction. The same is true in our own lives. Whatever is most important should be before our eyes and knit into our bones."