So great is the darkness the only way I can see the hatchlings is to rest on my hands and knees. The moist sand, illuminated with phosphorescence, mirrors bright stars overhead.
The waves are rolling long. Just as two baby loggerheads find water, a wave washes far, far on to the beach and envelopes me with warm, salty water. I freeze, watching carefully for the tiny beings, small dark spots on this dark night. They find their way to the sea and I relax and feel myself connected….with all life.
Working with sea turtles brings me back to rhythms of sea and shore, light and darkness. They challenge me to find balance within myself, with nature…the cosmos.
This is the time I love. When all is quiet except the sea. The only voices I hear are in the waves or maybe the stars singing those high treble notes or the full moon bringing her deep alto soothing voice to my starved ears.
The sea turtle hatchlings made their bold appearance and are now swimming towards grandmother moon through the silver moon glade.
This is peace. This is living. Alone, but not really. Nature spirits dance in wild abandon at the miraculous birth of ninety-three loggerheads and who knows…I might soon join them in their dancing.
“Hello, Is anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home?….
This is not how I am. I have become comfortably numb. I have become comfortably numb.”
Acres upon acres of wild backcountry are being cleared at Gulf State Park. It’s not just the width of another trail they are clearing. It’s wide swaths of trees, underbrush, ground cover….gone. Little-by-little this jewel of a state park is being turned into a manicured, groomed city park that continues to push wildlife into smaller blocks of land.
First it was condos. The building boom hit right after Hurricane Frederic in 1979. It’s good for the economy, they said. It will generate jobs, they said. No, we can’t turn the beach front into a national wildlife refuge, there’s too much money to be made, they said. And so we witnessed the taming of the shoreline. Concrete, glass and landscaping that demands hideous amounts of water to survive.
Now that the beaches are nearly full of monuments to human-demand-for-more, the governor of the State of Alabama is building a monument to himself on the state park beach. Drive by and see his legacy…the mountain of sand…the machinery….all hail one of the biggest crooks in the history of Alabama politics.
It’s not just the new trail they are clearing. They leave a buffer of a few trees along the trail and most everything else is being cleared.
Off of Rosemary Dune Trail in the backcountry machines are busy in Gulf State Park. It’s not new trails that concern me, it’s the ridiculous amount of sacred land being cleared to make it appear more manicured? More city-park-like? There’s no reason for this kind of reckless behavior. None. And they are using restoration funds to do this?
The clearing isn’t confined to the trail development (shown here) and clearing, along country road 2 near the tee intersection they are clearing massive amounts of land….prime wildlife habitat.
I stopped to photograph the destruction and as soon as I unclipped from my pedals Sarah McLachian began singing, through my ear buds, the Prayer of Saint Francis….”Make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.”
It wasn’t just tears….it was sobs of grief. Where will the wild things go when humans bent on molding nature to their image and intention manicure it beyond recognition of what it once was?
And we sit by….and allow this destruction to continue. Pink Floyd nailed it….”We have become comfortably numb.”
The Big Dipper hangs at the northern horizon as I push up from the white sand. The stethoscope is still in my ears after it transmitted progress of the baby sea turtles hatching, scratching and making their way up…up…up from the darkness to the starlight.
With no moon to dim them, the stars are spectacular and are like jewels in the velvet sky. They seem to twinkle into infinity as the Milky Way winds its way through Scorpio and other constellations hanging gracefully over the Gulf of Mexico.
It is a perfect night on the beach. Music of the waves gently lapping against the shore is the background as the babies work diligently underground, in that dark Unknown. With instinct beyond human understanding, they tear and rip the rubbery egg shells and begin to crawl up…up…up to an unknown Source of Life.
Even when a nest hatched early and unattended and most babies crawled toward porch lights or were dispatched by crabs and coyotes and we hunted with visitors and ran and followed tracks with great sadness….there is still a sense of quiet peace. Nature isn’t always cuddly.
I now sit and listen with the stethoscope to the newly born working at the neatly tarped and trenched nest, ready for their imminent arrival, protected from lights that would surely draw them astray. Waves roll onto the shore. A shooting star flashes overhead. The warm breeze caresses my face. I am alone but only isolated from other humans. Everything here pushes in and tells me it’s okay.
The blood of dead hatchlings, killed by ghost crabs, is still on my hands…is on the hands of all humans as we alter and change wild habitat to claim it for ourselves.
It washed up during the sea turtle patrol walk not far from where I turned around. Usually I walk back on the road but the sand was firm so walking wasn’t difficult and it was a glorious sunrise with wild cloud formations over the Gulf and beach,
The bottle with the note in it was sitting at the edge of the surf. In the five seasons I’ve volunteered with our sea turtle team, I’ve found three messages in a bottle. Oddly enough, all during mid-July.
The first was after a wedding or commitment ceremony. It contained a prayer, images of the couple’s dreams and their vows. Their message, cast out into the Great Unknown, brought me a message of love and hope. I sent their hopes onward, out into the Universe, and kept the bottle in my office next to a dream board my daughter and son-in-law made.
The second bottle contained a very moving note about a young man that died in a distillery explosion in Kentucky. His mother’s friend sent her message out into the Great Mystery and asked the finder to let Kyle’s mom know it was found. I wrote a blog about it, let the damp note dry and sent it all to Rhonda, Kyle’s mom. I hope her grief was eased by knowing Kyle’s story lived on, his life touched others he had never met.
This last bottle had blue liquid in the bottom. Somebody forgot to use waterproof ink. They didn’t seal the cork. They also used a form letter…imagine sending a form letter out into the Universe. A fill-in-the-blank message in a bottle….with water-based ink. The paper was saturated and was falling apart when it was removed from the bottle.
I wondered….how often do people use a fill-in-the-blank wish list for their lives? Are we willing to live life by default or can we have the courage to work for our dreams? Are we sloppy in our life dreams? Are they easily erased by the challenges that come our way? Can we have the audacity to use permanent ink and create imaginative requests of our lives and be so full of belief that Something Out There will find it and respond that we seal the cork well so when it’s opened, the message is received with clarity.
It was a fun thing for the kids to do…fill out the form letter, toss it in the water and imagine. No big deal. But it reminded me to live with intention and realize that everything I do affects not only my life but the lives of others around me. Whoever opens up a blog post and reads it or sees one of my images of dolphins or whales or ocean life…they are, in some way, affected. When I smile at the grocery clerk or hold the door for a stranger….or snuggle with my 11 month old puppy…or rub my kitty friend’s ears…every action matters.
It’s easy to live in a vacuum and forget that we do make a difference. Every little thing we do….it matters.
What would your message in a bottle say? Would you use permanent ink? How would you prepare to send it out into the Great Mystery?
