“It’s turtle poop,” said the fishing guide, in accented but clear English. Confident. Behind and in front of you, a short swim away, is choppy salt water. Silty. Milky. To your left and right are small islands, explosive with red and black mangrove and spikerush and Mexican silver palms and Chechen and kitinché. Lush. Idyllic. You see birds whose feathers and calls are moderately familiar. The islands seem to you as perfection, though for what you are unsure. This moment, maybe.
In between the silty milky water and the lush idyllic islands is crystal blue ocean. Still. Unbroken. In this calmness you float, your face to the muted blue sky above. You could see to the bottom as you dove in from the boat’s edge, after you shed your clothes and before you closed your eyes, and you think it might be six feet below, or maybe sixty. You open your eyes to look up at the fishing guide. The tops of his feet and the backs of his hands are an enviable chocolate brown. He has spent most of his indeterminate number of years standing in the sun on the deck tower of a Mexican panga.
Now you hold two hands up to the guide, gently kicking your legs below the water to keep your hands above. You hold your two hands up to the guide and spread them apart to indicate something the approximate size and shape of the candy bar you ate just minutes ago, and you say, “it was about this big.”
Turtle poop, said the guide once again. He smiles, his raccoon-mask eyes, less tan than the rest of his face, wrinkling at the corners. “Good,” you say. “I thought for sure it was human.”
You lay back and close your eyes and float again, quietly elated that this thing – things – that nearly brushed up against you in the bay yesterday afternoon was not human poop. You lay back and float and are quietly elated that it came from a green sea turtle, an animal with a face moderately familiar, like that of an old man; quietly elated that this turtle that poops like you and has a face like you one day might, has, inside its flippers, a humerus and a radius and an ulna too, and four bony fingers and a fifth that looks moderately familiar to an opposable thumb.
You lay back and float, looking up at the sky at the origins of everything.
Another well-timed piece from your pen, Jay. Artfully delivered in the middle of some brutal cold. Thanks for the warm thoughts.
My son had a turtle nibble his calf while swimming in Hilo. A surfer dude older than me said to him, “Brah, that turtle loves you. She just gave you a kiss of ohana. That’s a blessing forever.”
I had just watched a kiss of ohana.
I think I just laid back and floated, looking up at the sky at the origins of everything.
T
Loved it.
You never disappoint! I have been so disheartened by the results (and now the utter chaos) following this election, I needed to transport myself to gazing at the sky. Plan to do that tonight in this beautiful Shenandoah Valley where I live. Hope there are stars to guide me.
Thanks!