Orange Blossom Sissy: The Turtle

Let me just start by saying that I’m not a tree hugger. Never once in my life have I chained myself to a bulldozer to save a pine forest from the big bad humans. I’m also not a pantheistic, nature-is-god kind of person. I believe that God made nature, but he deserves the glory, not the flora and fauna.

But, however, I do. LOVE. Nature.

When I was a kid, I didn’t totally love being outdoors. I liked sun and water and that was about it. Dirt, animals, sticks, leaves and bugs were out of the question. For me, a nature walk that was not on a paved road ended in tears. But as I've gotten older, lived on a farm and seen life up close, I don’t feel the same as I did as a child. After spending hours outside in the heat and mud and muck, being eaten up by insects and stomped on by animals, I was able to get past my discomforts and see the beauty of wildlife. It’s so pure, so beautiful, so untouched. And yet at the same time it works like clockwork. Have you ever seen a tree grow? Have you seen a young cow care for her first calf like it’s all she’s ever done? There’s something incredibly refreshing about being in a world that doesn't need you, yet welcomes you anyway.

I’ve kind of been blessed, although my dad complains, to live with one foot in the country and the other on concrete. Because now I understand both worlds and I see what is special about each of them. But I can also see where where our worlds deprive us.

My college campus is on a nature reserve--a set of grassy trails and marshes among the busy roads of a growing city. Most of the people, me included, just go to class and leave and don’t think once about the nature around us.

You can’t even see it, for the trees.

But yesterday on my way out from class, there was a turtle in the parking lot. Just, like, this little turtle sitting out by the sidewalk in the sun. Now I see turtles all the time at home--gopher tortises, alligator snapper turtles, little freshwater turtles. Compared to the turkeys, deer, and bunnies that I also see, the turtles at home kind of get overshadowed.

They’re just...turtles.

But this turtle at school? This little dude was famous. People kept stopping whatever they were doing, dropping down on the ground by it and snapping pictures. Small crowds formed around this turtle like he was a circus side show. People who were usually in a hurry or staring at their phones stopped in their tracks.

“Do you see this?”

“Oh my gosh, is that a turtle?”

“Oh he’s so cute! Quick, get a picture!”

“Can I touch him?”

And it occurred to me that while I just saw another turtle, most everyone else had seen a part of the world that they have been removed from. It used to be that people couldn’t see the forest for the trees, but now I think that a lot of people can’t even see trees.

That afternoon I went home and got out my camera and I did what I’m not likely to do every day. Something my dad does all the time, and I roll my eyes at him.

I took a walk.

I could have sworn that I had seen our property a million times before, but I’m not so sure about that anymore. I looked at things with new eyes, knowing that where I live now, these sights are rare.

Over our years living on this farm, I have seen the thirst in people's eyes when they visit us. They see the woods and the marshes and cattle and the birds and they itch to be in it, to see and experience it all. Their eyes glisten and they get excited, and you can just tell that they don't just want to be here, they need to be here.

I know this because that's why I'm here.

I have always been annoyed by radical environmentalists. Those who get in the way of American progress and the welfare of humanity for the cause of Mother Nature. People can’t go hungry or homeless just to protect the natural habitat of a handful of animals. But now I’m starting to wonder: is it so bad to protect a little bit of wilderness? Because now that I’m looking at it, now that I’m immersed in it, I remember one thing far too many of us have forgotten.

This is our natural habitat, too.