When Is the Last Time You Saw a Butterfly?

​By Allen Murry

Climate displacement usually gets talked about like a statistic. Numbers moved. Homes lost. Acres burned. In Growing Papaya Trees, the idea that seeds move out of necessity—not choice—and still hold the whole history of the tree inside them made me pause. There was something familiar in that image, like it was describing a kind of movement I’ve lived without ever naming it.

I’ve moved around my whole life, but the one that shook me the most was leaving Bakersfield for Seattle. That move felt different. Heavy. It was the first time I’d ever packed up my life and gone somewhere that far from family. I didn’t know anybody. I felt isolated for a long time, like I’d dropped a seed onto soil that wasn’t sure if it wanted to take me in. But little by little, it’s getting better.

What I realized, and what this assignment helped me see is that we all carry pieces of where we come from. I carry the kindness and generosity of my grandmother. I carry my father’s lessons about providing and standing up for the people you love. I carry my mother’s warmth and all the memories she left me with. And I carry a part of myself that stays open to new people and new places, even when stepping into the unknown feels uncomfortable.

Those are my roots. That’s the “home” I bring with me.

And that’s what I’m trying to pass down to my 6-year-old daughter, Arrielle. I’m still figuring out how to explain all this to her, but what I want her to know is simple: Home is something you build every time you refuse to let the world harden you. Home is the people you love, not the ground you stand on. And our roots grow wherever we decide to keep watering them.

The environment around us is shifting in ways that make this conversation even more real. Summers are hotter. Wildfires burn longer. Droughts feel normal now. The fishing spots I grew up with don’t have the same amount of fish they used to. The sky turns into smoke some years. And the question that hit me recently was simple but sad: When is the last time you remember seeing a butterfly? Because I honestly can’t tell you. They used to be abundant and everywhere when I was a kid. Now it feels like they vanished without us noticing.

Climate change doesn’t always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it disappears quietly, one butterfly at a time.

The global stories of resilience remind me what it means to rebuild. When I think about resilience, I think of the families who survived the 2011 Somalia drought, the communities recovering after Cyclone Nargis in 2008, the 2013 India floods, Libya’s 2023 Storm Daniel, and Haiti after Hurricane Matthew. Nobody wants to start over but somehow, people do. For me, what pushes me forward is fear. Fear of going backwards. Fear of wasting time. Fear of not being the man my daughter needs. Fear can break you or fuel you, and I choose to let it push me.

In Fresh Banana Leaves, Dr. Hernandez talks about how Indigenous communities carry their teachings even when their land is taken from them. Their knowledge moves. Their stories move. Their responsibilities move. Reading that helped me understand something: people survive because identity is portable. Culture is portable. Roots are portable. We don’t forget where we come from just because life forces us somewhere new.

Climate displacement isn’t only about land disappearing, it’s about whether people can stay whole while everything around them changes shape. It’s about seeing if their food, their language, their memories, and their relationships can survive the move. The hardest part is not losing the land, but losing the parts of yourself that the land helped create.
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Maybe the butterfly fits this assignment more than anything. A creature that survives by changing form. One life into another. Wings replacing the part of you that once crawled, the kind of shift you make when you’re trying to survive something bigger than you. Butterflies aren’t fragile, they’re proof that transformation is survival.
If the butterflies ever return, I hope it’s because we learned how to take care of the world — and each other — before it was too late.

One way to support climate-displaced communities is to support organizations that focus on relocation with cultural preservation, not just relocation. Groups led by Indigenous scientists and communities like those featured in Fresh Banana Leaves, help displaced families rebuild without losing language, food traditions, or identity."

Reference:

• Hernandez, J. (2022). Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science. North Atlantic Books.