Sharing a late dinner, wine and merriment under a hand-made palm thatched roof, hosting 2-hours of solar paneled electric light per night, on a warm beach, on a tiny strip of land between two great oceans, in the middle of what is winter at home which is now several hours by plane due north, opens some sort of door into the realms of possibility that only travel to a far away land can open. You are precariously in the middle of something that normally is far beyond your grasp. Something that has been pulsing on forever, with or without you.
I have heard of the giant turtles that float through the oceans, that once mature, return to the beaches of their birth time and again to lay their own eggs. I have seen little creek turtles in the northwest US. I have seen turtles sunning themselves on rocks in dank lakes in the mid-west. But these giant ocean turtles, I have only seen photos of, and like a sunset or a mountain vista, photos have limited impact. They do not make your heart swell a million times over, they hide the real perspective, you remain separate from the life the turtle is leading.
But when, on a warm dry season night in Nicaragua, you take a short walk with new friends along an undeveloped beach and you see the tire track looking footprints of a mother Tortuga and you follow them to where a giant beast of a turtle is methodically digging a hole, your lives have become intertwined. Do you quietly wait until she is finished with her age old work of making babies and then steal the eggs, or leave that to an egg hunter who will find them later that night and sell the supposed aphrodisiac at Managua’s market? Do you go back to your lodge and tell the night watchman who will dig them up himself and place the eggs in the turtle sanctuary, to be protected and birthed and returned to sea later? One of our group said, “I wouldn’t get in the way of a local and his food.”
But isn’t man’s progress, man’s population boom coupled with man’s idea that we can take it all, take every egg, itself getting in the way of the local’s food? Isn’t the mere fact of all of us eating everything and leaving no seeds for tomorrow, getting in the way of tomorrow’s food supply? Of tomorrow’s perpetual life?
Days later, on another beach, another turtle sanctuary, I spoke in attempted Spanish with my surf instructor’s father, Saol, who was charged with overseeing the fenced in turtle sanctuary, the newly hatched turtles, and with organizing the eager tourists to help set them on the beach to waddle into the ocean, back into their home.
I have heard of the giant turtles that float through the oceans, that once mature, return to the beaches of their birth time and again to lay their own eggs. I have seen little creek turtles in the northwest US. I have seen turtles sunning themselves on rocks in dank lakes in the mid-west. But these giant ocean turtles, I have only seen photos of, and like a sunset or a mountain vista, photos have limited impact. They do not make your heart swell a million times over, they hide the real perspective, you remain separate from the life the turtle is leading.
But when, on a warm dry season night in Nicaragua, you take a short walk with new friends along an undeveloped beach and you see the tire track looking footprints of a mother Tortuga and you follow them to where a giant beast of a turtle is methodically digging a hole, your lives have become intertwined. Do you quietly wait until she is finished with her age old work of making babies and then steal the eggs, or leave that to an egg hunter who will find them later that night and sell the supposed aphrodisiac at Managua’s market? Do you go back to your lodge and tell the night watchman who will dig them up himself and place the eggs in the turtle sanctuary, to be protected and birthed and returned to sea later? One of our group said, “I wouldn’t get in the way of a local and his food.”
But isn’t man’s progress, man’s population boom coupled with man’s idea that we can take it all, take every egg, itself getting in the way of the local’s food? Isn’t the mere fact of all of us eating everything and leaving no seeds for tomorrow, getting in the way of tomorrow’s food supply? Of tomorrow’s perpetual life?
Days later, on another beach, another turtle sanctuary, I spoke in attempted Spanish with my surf instructor’s father, Saol, who was charged with overseeing the fenced in turtle sanctuary, the newly hatched turtles, and with organizing the eager tourists to help set them on the beach to waddle into the ocean, back into their home.
Hundreds of little baby turtles learning to swim in little coolers awaiting the ocean. Many of these little creatures will be eaten once alone in the vast Pacific, but here, at least, they had a chance to hatch, they were protected from theft and sure death on the night their mother placed them into the flipper dug hole on Hermosa beach.
The way the tourists gently and lovingly shepherded the infants across the playa and into the ocean, standing around, with protection and hope in their hearts. Back home, we say we “shepherd water” from the great Colorado into reservoirs for developers, industry and poisonous agriculture to use and waste. This is a despicable use of the term stolen to sound as if the developers are godly and the water needs us. The Church uses the term too and for similar overwrought purposes. The water shepherd, the god shepherd, has greed and power and money and control in his heart. But with these little turtles, who only are alive because they were protected, there was only love in the hearts of the shepherds – the real meaning, the life giving meaning, of the word. The true value of the human being showed on this day.
This was an agrarian birth. Humans, taking on the responsibility of protecting little baby turtles, of trying, at least on this little strip of beach, to do the right thing, to not take and destroy, but to nurture and set free the continued web of life. This, caring for perpetual life, is the work of the backyard agrarians the world over. It is the work of humans at this vital point in history. It is our job. It is our only job. To give life, not just to our own children, but to all of creation.
The way the tourists gently and lovingly shepherded the infants across the playa and into the ocean, standing around, with protection and hope in their hearts. Back home, we say we “shepherd water” from the great Colorado into reservoirs for developers, industry and poisonous agriculture to use and waste. This is a despicable use of the term stolen to sound as if the developers are godly and the water needs us. The Church uses the term too and for similar overwrought purposes. The water shepherd, the god shepherd, has greed and power and money and control in his heart. But with these little turtles, who only are alive because they were protected, there was only love in the hearts of the shepherds – the real meaning, the life giving meaning, of the word. The true value of the human being showed on this day.
This was an agrarian birth. Humans, taking on the responsibility of protecting little baby turtles, of trying, at least on this little strip of beach, to do the right thing, to not take and destroy, but to nurture and set free the continued web of life. This, caring for perpetual life, is the work of the backyard agrarians the world over. It is the work of humans at this vital point in history. It is our job. It is our only job. To give life, not just to our own children, but to all of creation.
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