Faith versus Science

The residents of Feathertown, spurred by Cub and Hester, believe the butterfly invasion is the direct work of God, channeling a miracle through Dellarobia, which could perhaps pull the community out of the economic dumps if they can turn them into a tourist attraction. God graced them with the butterflies. The media focus on the spiritual side of the story, constructing a narrative in which the butterflies save Dellarobia from suicide, a type of miracle. Yet Ovid Byron and the environmental groups that hover around the mountainside know quite differently: the butterflies' millennia-long migratory patterns are shifting, an on-the-fritz reaction to rising global temperatures which is rewriting the landscape around them. Two narratives to explain a single phenomenon: faith versus science.

While Dellarobia is hardly a person of faith, she initially views the monarchs with a sense of possessive significance. If not God, at least the...