12 Hours on the Beach

Shuuuuuuuuuuuu…..shuffle..shuffle……SHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…..shuffle–crawl….. Silence.

Cycles of tides, rhythms of waves, calls of gulls as they make their last patrol over the sand……shuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…shuffle….shuuuuuuuuu….the sounds of sea turtle hatchlings as they break free of their eggs and begin their long crawl from under the white quartz sand.

On July 23rd the sea turtle nest East Beach team had been monitoring for Laguna Key team was wildly active. We continued to hear cascades of sand that lasted over 90 seconds and they came often. Then vigorous digging began as the loggerheads slowly made their way up against the pull of gravity and toward the pull of something even greater for them–the Gulf of Mexico.

As we patiently waited and watched for the young ones to emerge, the waves continued to whisper to them and to us. Stars called out to their internal timing and the crescent moon teased them with light as it silently slipped over the watery horizon leaving us in the dark–expectant, hopeful for a birthing.

Little by little team members drifted homeward, needing rest and renewal. Finally four of us sat vigil under the starry, summer sky. With microphone and speaker still connected to the sand outside the nest, we listened for hours to the cascading sand, the scrapes, the crawling noises and silences as the hatchlings rested, weary from their efforts to reach the night sky.

Alas, even though a deep crater had formed, sunrise thwarted the babies best efforts and so they spent the hot day resting, preparing for another nighttime attempt to merge with saltwater where their mother and father drifted in the blue-green water, never to see the tiny ones their union created.

I can’t remember the last time I spent the night on the beach. During those twelve hours my body and mind became more attuned to the rhythms of nature, more at ease with sitting in my own silence and simply being, witnessing the tidal nature of life whether lived at the shore or inland. Breathing in starlight, exhaling love for the beauty that surrounds us….what could be more important, more sacred than this?

When words drift away and the mind surrenders its nearly constant effort to analyze and decipher and plan….when we go beyond mind to that place of expansion and breath…where we breathe with the incoming rush of waves and efforts the baby turtles make to be born…we begin to understand that the Earth holds us all in a holy embrace and we labor to be born, over and over again throughout our lives.

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The next night 73 tiny loggerheads found their way to the surface of their earthly home and made their way to the sea. Twelve long nights we sat vigil yet it was those last 12 hours that brought me back home….to myself, to the Gulf Coast, to the Path.