The Circle of Life

Contributing Editor Karen Walrond also blogs at her personal blog, Chookooloonks, and her green shopping blog, Emerald Market.

This past weekend, my husband, daughter and I went to the north coast of Trinidad to witness the nesting of the giant leatherback turtles. There's something about going out onto the beach at nightfall with one of the local guides, and watching the dark, lumbering shadows make their way out of the water, find the perfect spot, and each lay 80 - 100 eggs, before making their way back to the deep.

It makes you feel small. Tiny. But important. And part of something so huge as to defy comprehension.

At dawn the following morning, we awoke and made our way back to the beach to see the last of the evening's turtles returning to the sea. And lest my husband and I think that we were the only ones who understood the significance of what we'd witnessed, as we watched one of the turtles make her way into the waves, our little daughter, Alex, suddenly waved her two-year-old arms and cried out into the still, quiet morning:

"BYE-BYE, MUMMY TURTLE!"

[img_assist|fid=415|thumb=0|alt=grandriviere leatherback]

(This post is also cross-published at The Pan Collective.)