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Monday, December 22, 2008

The Sea Turtles: Putting the Magic in the Magic School Bus


We didn’t know where we were going -- all we knew was that we wanted to wake up on a beach. We drove deep into the night, from Colima, the location of our last project, to Maruata, an area famed for its beautiful beaches. After navigating primarily by instinct, Ryan pulled Patricia (our bus) to a spot at the end of a road, right up on the sand. Before we exited we could hear the slow but powerful waves smack the shore, and the nearly-full moon gave us enough light to appraise our surroundings: a two-mile wide half-arc of perfect sand, bookended by gorgeous rock outcroppings, almost entirely deserted (save a bluish 40 ft. school bus and her crew). The first groggy members of the group dragged their sleeping bags down to the beach, and within moments encountered a man and a boy (his son?) carrying a large box of baby sea turtles. We had unknowingly camped near a turtle nesting sanctuary, and a clutch of hatchlings was ready to be released. The turtles thrashed about, overlapping in a kaleidoscopic, ever-changing MC Escher drawing.
“Holy shit, you don’t even need to take acid in Mexico,” Weldboy squealed giddily, his hands buried beneath a layer of soft shells and flippers.
After gathering the rest of TEMA, we asked a few questions of the man and his son, and snapped a few photos, but mostly just stared in a silent reverie. Our timing was uncanny, cosmic; if we hadn’t arrived at that random beach, at that exact moment, turtles would not have been part of our night. After a few dreamy minutes with the infant reptiles, we upended the box several meters from the beach and witnessed one of nature’s purest demonstrations of survival instinct: get to the sea. Programmed to head downhill and towards the water, they marched down the beach, and wave by wave, were swept into the ocean. We drifted back to our sleeping bags, where our dreams were filled with turtles and waves. Turtles and waves.

2 comments:

pencilboy said...

turtles are amphibians, lovie.

Gliderbison said...

Father dearest, you are dead wrong about that. Please investigate. I will accept your letter of public appology over my blog.