The Small Miracles of Life

My family’s cottage is a thriving home for wildlife, and I see so many beautiful and sacred creatures there that I would never have been able to see in the urban world. It's how I managed to take this photo, with my LGK61 phone and with no filters or modifications added. Truly, I believe it is a magical place, just a quiet and small cottage out in nature facing a mineral rich, dark blue lake with titanic trees and massive and silent granite rocks stretching like small mountains from the woods to the sandy shore. I have grown up there, as has my mother and my grandfather, and my great grandfather. In the summer, we swim all day and maybe go stretch out on the heated rocks to warm up, in fall we go on journeys through the molten gold forest and collect turkey feathers, in the winter we hide inside by the fire or go snowshoeing on the frozen lake, and in spring, we watch the wildlife thrive, because us as humans are a part of this beautiful and natural cycle. We are not separate from nature, and this place truly reminds me of that. Foxes that steal our shoes if we leave them out too long, chipmunks that would climb up our legs to reach a peanut, a herd of deer standing on the frozen lake and leaving trails of footprints in the snow, bald eagles soaring overhead in hope of catching a fish, rattlesnakes sunning on the immense granite rocks, minks dashing across the shoreline. If we’re really lucky, we may even see a mother bear with her cubs, or a herd of moose. But, no matter what the conditions are, we can always rely on the turtles who lay their eggs, hatch and break free of their eggshells, and swim in the bay every year. We have every year been able to watch our mother snapper or painted turtle climb cautiously out of the water and make her way to the perfect place to have her nest, and witness a mother turtle laying her eggs while we have a campfire not so far away and watch the moon peak out beyond the treetops. We protect and make sure the babies get safely to the water for the first time, because it only seems fair that we give something in return for this magical moment, so we take care of her eggs all winter by covering them up to hide them from hungry predators.

This year though, we got to see something special we had never seen before, and I feel truly blessed to have been able to have witnessed this. My sister was standing out on the rocky shore and she called out, saying that she saw baby turtles heading to the water. I came quickly, excited, and even though I had seen this many times before, I was surprised to see something new. Instead of seeing a baby turtle making its way to the water, I actually got to see it climb out its hole in the ground. There was a hole in the sand, and three baby turtles sat there, all huddled together, digging their way to the sunlight. It was truly magical to watch these newborn beings seeing for the first time, seeing the water, the trees, the light. I could feel their excitement, nervousness, and disorientation their when they took in their surroundings and saw how big the world was. That didn’t stop them from getting out of that hole right away though. We watched, awestruck, as they stood up for the first time on surprisingly steady feet, and I was so amazed to see them all turn towards the shore immediately, and begin their journey to the water, to begin their life. That even though they must have been born only minutes earlier, they just knew that they had to find the water, and they already seemed so sure of where they wanted to go.

Later that afternoon, a fourth turtle was climbing its way out of the same hole, and this one was much more cautious than the others. The other two of which we had already seen swim away into the bay. The third one from earlier was struggling in the frothy waves on the beach, and the poor little thing kept getting tossed onto its back or slammed back onto the sand. It never gave up; it would just pick itself up again when it could, and try again. Eventually though, I got to see the small turtle take control and swim right into the waves, little legs swirling as it dove to the bottom of the lake. We never saw the fourth turtle leave, but when we went back and checked on the hole, there was no turtle to be found.

The magical and mysterious ways of nature never stop to amaze me, and I realize that everything in nature is exactly as it's supposed to be, perfectly balanced and pure. We just have to know that we are a part of this natural cycle, and we have to work together to keep the balance if we may be tipping the scales. One of the reasons why humans are harming the earth, purposefully or not, may be because most of us believe that we don’t belong in this cycle, or that it is a bad thing to be a part of it. If we were to just calm down, and live in the present, and trust our existence instead of questioning it, our Mother Earth would be able to take care of us, nurture us, heal us, and guide our paths like she did for the baby turtles. Maybe there’s something we can learn from nature...

Be like the baby turtles everyone!

-Olivia Gyuran.