In one of my and Piper’s walks in Cartier Park and the campground, I found a snapping turtle out and about, I imagine looking for a nest site. It put me in mind of a turtle I saw last year laying eggs not too far from that location. When I returned the next day, I saw that the nest had been dug up. I don’t know if it was a raccoon or a coyote or what it was that dug up the nest, but it made me recall how what appears to be unfortunate from one perspective is fortunate to another.
For the snapping turtle and its progeny, the efforts of reproduction came to an end. For the animal that dug up the nest, they were able to consume some protein that allowed them to survive for longer and perhaps go on to reproduce. This thought was all the more apparent amidst the greening and growing foliage that depends on centuries of death and decay for its survival for another season, before things turn brown and cold and hard, and its greenery becomes part of the detritus.
“Life is messy and mysterious,” I thought. Ultimately, how do I propose to judge good or bad, right or wrong, good luck or bad, with such a small window of perspective? We spend so much effort to be safe and secure, to have a predictable outcome to a measured effort, when in the end, like the snapping turtle, we’re just burying our eggs somewhere in the sand and walking away. As humans, we hope for the best outcome, but fate and the bigger picture may have its own design.
For myself, instead of getting too caught up in securing and guarding and preserving, I will try to find joy in the messiness and mystery. In freeing myself from the need to control what I behold, I will surrender to the purpose, or perhaps lack of purpose, that is beyond my limited powers of perception. Looking at the big lake at sunset, finding a Petoskey stone, watching the trumpet swans—an “invasive species” on Lincoln Lake, I come to appreciate how my time and place occupy a comically limited viewpoint.
Instead of spending my brief time trying to force my will on people and events, whose ultimate role and purpose in the span of the universe escapes my purview, I will take every opportunity to love and find joy in that which is passing. I will try causing as little harm as I am able in my efforts to control outcomes, and rather try to spread comfort and peace.
What better time than a fine day in May, passing a snapping turtle laying her eggs in a vulnerable sandy nest, to consider this fine thread of being that somehow connects and travels through us all. Me and Piper walking along with the imperfect, the faulty, the transitory, in the midst of the messiness and mystery of life.
