Nest 51

Turtle season is in full swing at Guana. I did make an ill-advised promise not to bore the readers of Eat Here with this detail, and am still avoiding writing about The Spill. I can't help myself, though: this week, we noted a nest labeled "N 51". It was there Tuesday of this week, when we went to the beach as we always do for peace and comfort. It had not been there Sunday.

Judging by the tracks, we surmised the female turtle had made the long, slow, danger-frought trek Monday night during the high tide. By the time of our visit the tide had fallen way out, and the evidence of her determined incursion to the very beach, perhaps, of her own birth could be seen a long way out. I was standing at the low tide line when I took this. It's a phone camera so the quality isn't great, but you get the idea; if you look closely you can see the nest, marked that very morning by the Turtle Patrol. It's a long way from where I was standing. When I got close enough I could see a spot where it looked like she might have rested. "Oh, surely she did," Rodney said, "If you've ever seen a turtle walk up from the water and dig her nest...they look like the need to rest." And this raised another topic, one from the history we share as members of families and communities where conservation and the protection of natural resources were notions seldom considered, and when they were the tone ranged from humor to skepticism to outright sarcasm. Here's a photo found in Rodney's family archives (read: shoebox) taken in 1968 of a just-laid clutch of eggs in a turtle nest. You can't see it in this faded old second-generation photo, but they are definitely speckled, perhaps even leatherback turtle eggs. He remembers clearly seeing, more than once, turtles coming up onto the beach in the South Ponte Vedra/North Vilano area, and recalls the casual indifference of his parents and their friends as the parties carried on into the night, while the turtles fulfilled their destiny, unchanged by millennia.
Fast-forwarding to the current century (this week), this photo show the imprints of the turtle's flippers on the sand and coquina, marking her deliberate progress. I hope she laid a hundred eggs that night, and I hope those eggs beat the odds. I know I've written about it already. I know I promised not to be boring on the topic, and most of all, I know I vowed not to write about The Spill, and I won't, directly, mostly because the thought weighs too heavily for my heart to bear without wild unbounded grief: an outward and visible sign, as may resonate with you if you went to Catholic school as a kid, of our inward and spiritual positive and absolute heartbreak. But I can give you the turtles, people. I can tell you that this week saw the marking of Nest 51. Here it is, finally, right where you can walk to beach and see it yourself (with apologies to my far-away friends and readers). Rodney and I are told that the Guana Turtle patrol has marked one leatherback nest so far, and more loggerhead nests than I have numbers for. Say your best and most honest prayers to the Great Mother or God or Yahweh or the Great Spirit, or to whatever language frames and constitutes the Holiest of Holies when you lay down your head at night. Pray for the tiny, brand new and ancient beings dwelling in the small shells, nestled in the warm white sand, cradled in Nest 51, wrapped in the summer solstice.



Eat Here offers its sincere thanks to Jake, Linda, John, Scott and all the other people - employees and volunteers - who keep Guana safe for all manner of wild things, including unhatched baby turtles and people.

In Paradisum

Not long ago someone said to me, "I think we live in paradise," and I think she might have been right. There are lots of examples, like the inside of the Alcazar Hotel, downtown in St. Augustine, where the ground floor was long ago a swimming pool, and the beautiful rough surface still slopes gently downward where the deep end of the pool once was. And here is another deep end of a pool, even grander and far more deep, graced by the backdrop of a crystalline winter blue sky. Welcome to the Guana Tolomato Marine Estuarine Reserve, known to locals as simply Guana, where the northeastern Florida beach stretches out comfortably with no development on either side. It is pristine, sparkles with shimmery shark teeth and other fossils and is carefully protected by the DEP's law enforcement team.

Late this summer, Rodney and I spent one long evening walking together, looking for fossils, kicking our feet in the surf and we stopped to picnic as we often do. Some yards down the beach, we saw a man approach, carrying a plain styrofoam cooler and watched him with suspicion: turtles lay their eggs along this beach and most everyone keeps an eye out for them and their terribly vulnerable nests. As we watched, this lone guy approached one of the well-marked nests with his cooler and began to dig. Imagine! We approached, with every intent of calling some number (what number? would we call the police?) and suddenly Rodney recognized the guy: he was the state's working scientist, responsible for monitoring the viability of the nests.

By the time we arrived, one corner of the nest had been excavated as the guy ensured the hatchlings were thriving and in fact expected to emerge from their nest that very night. Was he sure? He was. He opened the cooler and showed us the damp old towel at the bottom, forming a temporary resting place for 5 small, frantic baby turtles. He would return at sunset to release them and keep an eye on their siblings who would be seeking their mother ocean around dark. This, he told us, was the method of the turtle patrol, who try to take advantage of the 24-hour-long burst of energy and instinct by which the babies attempt to propel themselves to the sea. One, ONE, in one thousand of these tiny creatures, manage to reach the surf, pass its tumult and all the eager predators along the way, to survive.

And there were 5 of the contenders. Right there.

Last winter, it should be noted, Rodney saw a North Atlantic Right whale, traveling with her calf. Her name is Arpeggio. But that's a tale for another evening. For now it's enough to note that we may, indeed, be dwelling In Paradisum.