Turtle Dreams

As the summer turns towards fall the painted turtles are gathering on the log at the edge of the pond to soak up summer’s last rays of sunlight. Before long they will be burrowing in the mud at the bottom of the pond sleeping through the cold months of winter. Thinking about their long months in the mud makes me wonder about

Turtle Dreams

Do they dream, I wonder? If they dream, do they dream of basking in the warmth of the sun on the log at the edge of the pond? And do they feel the cold of winter buried in the mud at the bottom of the pond? What does it feel like to wake up in the spring and once again feel the warmth of the sun?

Turtle

Now I see it—
it nudges with its bulldog head
the slippery stems of the lilies, making them tremble;
and now it noses along in the wake of the little brown teal

who is leading her soft children
from one side of the pond to the other; she keeps
close to the edge
and they follow closely, the good children—

the tender children,
the sweet children, dangling their pretty feet
into the darkness.
And now will come—I can count on it–the murky splash,

the certain victory
of that pink and gassy mouth, and the frantic
circling of the hen while the rest of the chicks
flare away over the water and into the reeds, and my heart

will be most mournful
on their account. But, listen,
what’s important?
Nothing’s important

except that the great and cruel mystery of the world,
of which this is a part,
not to be denied. Once,
I happened to see, on a city street, in summer,

a dusty, fouled turtle plodded along—
a snapper—
broken out I suppose from some backyard cage—
and I knew what I had to do—

I looked it right in the eyes, and I caught it—
I put it, like a small mountain range,
into a knapsack, and I took it out
of the city, and I let it

down into the dark pond, into
the cool water,
and the light of the lilies,
to live.

   — Mary Oliver

Sometimes I wish that, like the turtles, I could sleep through the long Minnesota winters. But when I think about it, I want to soak in and be awake for every single minute of this life. There are a finite number of turns of the seasons that I will see and experience. And I don’t want to miss them. The turning of the seasons is a huge part of life in Minnesota. The animals and plants that live here have adapted to the seasons and if we are lucky will continue to adapt to the changes we humans have wrought.

I’ve seen very few butterflies this summer, fewer than ever before. And I am so sad about this. I remember photographing countless butterflies in my first years of photography. Then during the past three years it seems there are so few. I have work to do to try to help this turn around, as do we all.

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

   — Aldo Leopold

Life and Death

Yesterday I watched the young green heron that has been visiting the pond. It stalked, caught, and ate a sizable frog. At first I was fascinated to watch the bird hunt. Then when I realized that it had captured a frog and was about to swallow it I could no longer watch. Once again I was reminded that life feeds on life, that death is always nearby, whether we see it or not.

The hummingbirds are having territorial battles over the feeder that hangs in front of our kitchen window. They spend more time chasing one another away than they do sipping the sugar water in the feeder. I will miss them when they migrate south for the winter.

I want to enjoy the days of fall, and I will, but I also am allowing myself to mourn the turning of the season towards fall and winter. Being here means embracing and feeling all my feelings, not just the so-called positive ones. Every day I find so many things in life that slay me with their exquisite beauty. And every day I also encounter many things that slay me in a different way with their cruelty and ugliness. To behold these things, the beautiful and the ugly, the kind and the cruel, is necessary for me. Though I would much rather focus on all of the beauty of life, I want to embrace it all, the full catastrophe with love, awareness, and humility.

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still.

   — Gretal Ehrlich

Do you also wonder about turtle dreams, my friend?

May you walk in beauty.