Field Note Writing Contest WINNER: The Monk And The Butterfly Counter

The Arabia Alliance recently hosted its first-ever Field Note Writing contest, open to writers throughout Georgia. We picked one adult winner Joseph Goodall, whose Field Note about Father Francis Michael at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit is featured below.

At the height of each summer over the last two decades, a cohort of capped and sun-screened citizen scientists have hiked around Panola Mountain, counting butterflies. An initiative of the North American Butterfly Association’s (NABA) Georgia chapter, one of the peak counts has identified sixty-seven butterfly species and over 1,500 individual specimens. Environmental writer Charles Seabrook dubbed it the “Monastery Count,” as the study’s fifteen-mile-radius encompasses the Monastery of the Holy Spirit (MoHS), a 2,300 acre spiritual oasis home to Father Francis Michael Stiteler, the initiator of the butterfly count and a host of land conservation efforts within the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area (AMNHA). 

Susan Meyers, an organizer with Monarchs Across Georgia, introduced me to the butterfly count and Stiteler. As a retired environmental educator, she sees the network of public and private lands within the National Heritage Area as crucial way stations for pollinators, such as her beloved monarch butterfly. With her bright smile and bespectacled eyes, Meyers imparted her knowledge at a naturalist education program I participated in last year. Along with handy diagrams for plant and insect identification, she distributed native plants at a community garden near the Heritage Area. As part of the nationwide initiative Habitat Hero, our fresh plantings would be logged on an online map, tracking pollinator-friendly corridors.

Every February, Meyers follows the monarchs to a mountaintop in Mexico, where they gather by the thousands for an overwinter diapause. Meyers and her colleagues buy back and count Monarch Watch paper tags from local forest guardians, carried south during the insects’ migration from Canada. Meyers has taken the mantle of this pilgrimage from Bill Calvert, who introduced her to the project in 2003. Calvert followed in the footsteps of Fred and Norah Urquhart, the first scientists to identify the monarch’s migration route and lifecycle in 1975.

Meyers sees monarchs as an “indicator” species: their colorful wings and continent-spanning journey are easier to convince the general public as worth protecting. Meanwhile, work to restore their habitats simultaneously serves bees, birds and other equally-important pollinators. As much as she enjoys tracking butterflies, close-to-home community engagement sustains her enthusiasm. Father Francis Michael has been a valuable partner to her in these efforts. 

Although I hadn’t yet met him, this bi-vocational monk had already blessed me. After joining the Monastery half a century ago, around the time the Urquharts first mapped the monarch’s route, he served as Abbot for twelve years and then more recently became the Land Manager. A couple of winters ago, I spent a weekend at the monastery’s retreat house. The blustery, long-shadowed days spent strolling the bucolic lawns, courtyards and forested trails were like a restorative, deep breath in a season of stress and fatigue. After learning more about the butterfly count, I reserved another stay and asked Meyers to connect me with her industrious friend.

It was a blue-skied autumn afternoon when I parked in front of the slate-gray retreat house attached to the majestic abbey church, which the monks built in the 1950s. After acquiring the property from the silent film actress Colleen Moore during WWII, a contingent of Trappist brothers moved south from The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky to Rockdale County, establishing an unassuming rhythm of prayer and farming (though in 1944, TIME magazine featured them in a tongue-in-cheek profile).

I found Father Francis Michael in the lobby on his hands and knees, scouring the carpet with a magnifying glass and flashlight for a tiny, runaway beetle he had collected that morning. When he stood to greet me, I was surprised to find him wearing a pale green polo shirt, khakis and sneakers. He led me out the back doorway, where his small, red pickup truck was parked. After clearing out some CDs and food wrappers, he invited me aboard.

We drove down a dirt road to a fenced garden where the final autumn blooms were fading. Soft-spoken, he seemed embarrassed that the pollinator garden was unkempt. Even still, he identified the iridescent amber wings of a fiery skipper.

We drove past the stand of pine trees the monks used to sell for timber, stacks of multi-colored beehive boxes, and one of three ponds that drain into each other before flowing to Honey Creek. Out his open window, he pointed at an orange gulf fritillary, telling me its host plant is a passionflower. He shared these connections readily, without an air of superiority. When he called out a variegated fritillary, I couldn’t see it, but I believed his muted enthusiasm.

He stopped the truck in a field of dense switchgrass, the seed heads buffeting the peeling red hood, then opened his door so we could strain to see a buckeye. A predominantly brown butterfly, it blended in with the leaf litter. Then its wings flapped, catching the late afternoon sunlight.

On the south side of the abbey, we waded through dried blades bristling against our waists. In a clearing, he pointed out new growth at our feet, deep green tufts against the red clay. Now that these native grasses were established, it was no longer necessary to re-seed the fields each season.

Back at the abbey, he led me to his office, where red and yellow stained glass windows punctuated the brick walls and shelves laden with books. He gifted me a book about butterfly gardening, saying he was trying to divest his collection.

An aerial map depicted hatched zones along Honey Creek, conservation easements purchased by local governments through Georgia Piedmont Land Trust. Among these protected areas the monks have also begun a green cemetery, another source of income and sustainable land management practice.

At his computer, he scrolled through his iNaturalist account, where he has logged over 4,500 observations, the most of any individual in Georgia, including a hundred butterfly species. I was amazed at the wealth of diversity he had witnessed on the monastery grounds.

Back in the lobby, he referenced the writings of St. Bonaventure, grasping his wrinkled arm, his wrist, then his hand. “This is all Christ,” he said. “It’s a mystery. Christ is in everything.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph R. Goodall is a writer and civil engineer whose fiction, essays, and poetry explore the intersection of human communities and natural landscapes. His debut short story collection, What the Bird Sees in Flight, examines the unraveling and reunion of a strong-willed farming family. Born in New Zealand and raised in Florida, he has called Atlanta home for more than a decade. Drawing inspiration from watersheds, local history and a diverse range of storytellers, his work has appeared in publications such as Flora Fiction, Litro USA, The Masters Review, and Appalachian Places.

Read the other Field Note Writing Contest entries that won or were named runner-up below. And please participate next year!

• “The Key to Flat Rock” by London Ahyee
• “A Lifetime Of Experiences On The Arabia Mountain PATH” by Katy King
• “The Tidal Grey Impact Of Arabia Mountain” by Gabrielle Richmond