Science and politics alone will not save the monarchs [butterflies], any more than they will save other threatened species and habitats, any more than they will save the monarch meadows and milkweek stands along my [walking] path. What is required is something that we have mostly lost in the high-tech, high-velocity, virtual world of the developed countries: a deeply felt, unintellectualized, instinctive "yes" — a sense that behind the gaudy delight of 20 million butterflies hanging on fir trees, there is a natural and infinite power that binds all life in a holy web.

Chet Raymo, The Path