The hill slopes upward, and we cross through millions of giant green caterpillars in furious slow motion. What I want to say to the caterpillars is slow down, enjoy life, why inch along so fast? But instead we just ride over them.

The ones that we don't run over are tomorrow’s hummingbird sphinx moths, one of the largest insects of the North American deserts.

Up in elevation again and the road is all orange butterflies. A handful slap to juice against the truck, but millions more curve up and over the road like a vast hooved migration.

I don't know about this area, but for some reason it attracts butterflies and moths.

Some people think the word butterfly is a once-whimsical mispronunciation of a type of insect that seemed so free. In old English, this sovereign creature was thought to be named for its lighthearted disregard for gravity. Before English settled on its name, they say the butterfly was the 'Flutterby.' But other etymologists point out the Old English word was ‘buttorfleoge’, a word that in the old European languages means roughly ‘milk thief.’ This latter explanation holds more water, because northern Europeans thought those heavenly creatures stole their milk.

While some butterflies adapt to changing conditions, the majority of the world’s butterfly species (there are about 18,500 species in the world, but only 750 in North America) are sensitive to change, and unable to adapt to quickly changing environments. Because of this, butterflies are often used by ecologists as indicator species - when they dwindle, it means other dwindling is on the way.

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