Turtle Mama

I've been holding off telling you about the turtles because anytime you start a story with, "So we spend all summer at the beach and get to help the turtle hatchlings to the water" people stop liking you.  BUT I'm trying to give you something here, so just read it and come see it for yourself sometime.

We relocate in the summer to Bald Head Island in North Carolina.  When Olivia was 5, I happened into the Turtle Central, the Conservancy Store and noticed a small sign announcing a need for  Turtle Monitors.  Since "Monitor" implies nothing other than watching I figured I was well qualified.  Keep in mind, I'd never even seen a mama Loggerhead turtle, much less a hatchling, but Olivia and I attended the recruitment meeting anyway.  Everyone else in the meeting already had an official monitor shirt and all but one of them ignored me.  This sort of treatment only makes me want to elbow my way in so I signed us up.  I clung to that one friendly face like a life raft for the first turtle season. Janie taught me the ropes and turned into the dearest of friends.

Turns out MONITOR means more to the conservation efforts in the state of North Carolina than just watching.  By the end of May, mama Loggerheads trudge up the beach and laboriously dig to lay and cover their eggs.  When they slog back into the water it's with a permanent goodbye to their hatchlings.  Their declining population has put them on the endangered species lists and places like Bald Head and other coastal areas establish monitoring programs to increase the odds that hatchlings can even make it into water since only 1 in 10,000 will actually make it to sexual maturity (25-30 years old).  They've been doing it for millions of years, so it's hard to believe they need our help, but just a vigilant human presence or a cage over a nest can keep a fox from digging or a bird at bay long enough for them to scamper into the water.

I didn't know when I signed up that summer that I would become part of a cultish, betting community.  The incubation is +/-60 days, but the biggest part of our participation comes in those last 2 weeks. Turtles hatch at night and we dig a runway of sorts (and thankfully we discovered garden edging because re-digging the trench every evening will make a girl want to quit) so that they have a straight path to the beach. Then we mostly sit and watch. Sunset is always worth it. The conversation among absolute strangers in the dark on the beach always turns into an interesting one and I love knowing that all of the confessions and worries that are shared there stay there even if maybe it's because none of us recognize each other in the daylight at the pool.  There are lots of monitor children so for the last 7 years, Olivia and her friends have played flashlight tag, danced, dazzled each other with glowing plankton and then finally nestled into sand to watch and wait.  We sometimes leave when the wind or storm seems like too much and there's no sign, but the gambler in most monitors will make us wait just a little longer, just in case. So sometimes we return home at 1 or 2 or 3 in the morning covered in sand and exhausted. Getting sand out of ears at 2am is no easy task.

When the bowl-like depression finally gives us some evidence of movement way down deep, our watch intensifies.  Visitors stop by with questions some of which are answerable (about how many eggs?) and some that are not (about how much longer?).  The best part is how many faces, young and old, sit in wonder, breath held, waiting, waiting, waiting, with other strangers who have at least this one thing in common.  It can take hours, and maybe days even, and some folks resign. What they hope to see is called a "boiling" - when the average 120 or so little palm-sized hatchlings clamor over one another and poke a little head and flipper above sand before starting what is sometimes a sudden, long, tumbling towards water.  All lights off for visitors and one big moon (or sometimes a Maglight) for them to follow. There's lots of shushing and "Did you see's?" and maybe a falsetto version of the Barney song or Jingle Bells if Janie's daughter Megan is there and determined to serenade them.

I swear when the babies hear the water better they speed up and rush towards it.  No human feet follow into the water, rarely a human hand allowed to flip them over if they are stuck on the way, and only instinct to get them there. I wonder if they know we are praying, that so many of us are hovering over them like angels for this small part of their journey. I wonder if they know their odds of survival and I hope that they don't.  The water scoops them up and takes them out and sometimes right back. They try again and again until they slip out of sight in the black water.

And then there are lots of words like miracle and beautiful and the gathering up of towels and chairs and children and a mass exodus of sleepy, but too happy to sleep people, off the beach. No flash photography means they will only leave with a memory. They are witnesses to nature, which I guess you could call miraculous, but it's hardly rare and is right there in front of each of us every day.  What's changed is their noticing of it and their gratitude for it.  I don't mind the sand in my teeth and hair and ears at this point. Now I can breathe.

Most monitors let the beach clear and sit and wait a while longer. I use the time to thank God for the quiet, for the moon, for noticing every little creature and usually, because I've been at it for a while, to wait for a few last stragglers who are still under the sand struggling harder than their brothers or sisters, and who need the protection just as much.  Sometimes it's only one, but we wouldn't make him walk it alone.  Quietly we will follow along the runway in the moonshine, me praying, Olivia encouraging, him using his flippers like little wings until he feels the weightlessness of water and is carried off on wave after wave into the dark.

Hatchling heading for water after nest excavation.