Dear Reader, If you were sitting around a dinner table and someone asked you to tell a story and engage us with all 5 senses, what would you tell?
Context: In a Speaker Nation session this month, our prompt was to” tell a 3-minute story which engaged sight, sounds, touch, taste, and smell.” I time-traveled back to my favorite job as a teenager on the U.S. Youth Conservation Corps team, where I had the special privilege of working alone on the beach three mornings a week. I also thought this storytelling prompt was a fun writing exercise, so I extended it and played with it here.
It’s sunrise over the Gulf of Mexico at the end of a 22-mile-long peninsula at Fort Morgan, Alabama. The sugary white sand glows golden pink. There is a gentle breeze blowing from the shore. I feel the salty air on my face, my bare legs, and my arms. I savor the prickle of briny taste on my tongue and the sound of a rhythmic slow swoosh of the knee-high waves gently rolling in.
There are no houses or condos on this tract of beach. There are only dunes as tall as oak trees. Further inland, where the mature dunes stand, live oak tree canopies crest their tops. Amongst the dunes closer to the shore, green sea oats up to my waist gently bend and sway in the breeze.
I swing my right leg over the black vinyl seat of the yellow three-wheeler and turn the key in the ignition. Click, click, vrooom. The engine fires up, and I roll along eastward towards the rising sun. As I cruise, my eyes scan from the shore to the dunes and back, looking for sea turtle tracks. The females come ashore alone at night to lay their eggs. At this early hour, the turtle crawls will not yet be blurred or covered up by human foot traffic.
I roll past a mini bonfire remnant, a ribbon of black charred ash smeared into a watercolor brush stroke by the tide. White ghost crabs run to and fro to escape the path of my noisy machine. Seagulls and terns lift off from their intertidal morning breakfast table and resettle as soon as I pass.
There, I see a line of flipper tracks! I turn off the three-wheeler and kick off my Nike sneakers. The fine, soft quartz sand squeaks beneath my feet as I follow the tracks and trek up to the edge of the dunes. Fifty feet from the water, where the dunes start, the tracks end, and the sand is all spun up. Its surface is damp, soft, and cool as I drop to my knees and gently dig into the loose, low sand mound with my fingers. I aim for the center and work back and forth to the outside and then back to the center.
Sweat begins to form on my brow and roll down my face. I lick my lips, a salt and Banana Boat sunscreen medley. My thin cotton Hanes t-shirt starts to cling to my back. My breath quickens and becomes audible. At about 10-inches down, I find the treasure. The shell membrane of sea turtle eggs looks like slightly deflated ping pong balls, a thin, bendable plastic. I place a small stick next to my find and quickly put the sand back to cover the hole I dug.
I untie the round, three-foot diameter green protective cage from the back of the 3-wheeler platform. Again digging with my hands, I bury its edges 12 inches down into the sand surrounding the nest. The wire mesh rectangles are big enough for the baby sea turtles to crawl out and into the water. And the mesh is small enough to keep foxes out. I will be back in high school, so I will not be participating in the October hatchling watch effort. In this solitude and scenery that feels so sacred, I am happy in what I hope will help with sea turtle conservation. I think this is the best job on Earth.
P.S. Jerome Carroll, Thank you for assigning me this job. And thank you to my soccer, track and cross-country coach/marine biology teacher, Gary Tucker, for the referral.
Further Reading: Alabama Coastal Foundation, Sea Turtle Nesting Facts; The job – US Youth Civilian Conservation Corps; The place – Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, Fort Morgan, Alabama.
Today’s Musical Accompaniments: Laura Veirs, I Can See Your Tracks [YouTube] and Fire Snakes [YouTube]
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