Excerpt Three of Fit For Survival, from Laundry Lines, A Memoir in Stories and Poems
I see a mother begin her long journey back to her breeding grounds. She swims through a bay where fishermen have worked their gill nets for so many years the practice is like a myth — it is their heritage, change never considered. Her flippers can only propel her forward; she cannot reverse, is entangled in netting and cannot back out to save herself. Most die — eight a day in only one of many gill nets of many small fishermen in this small area. Thousands die in commercial operations.
In this small Trinidadian bay, marine biologists attach a satellite telemetry device on a female turtle's back so that migratory routes and habitat use can be identified, and ways to help them survive can be devised. The women and men of the team talk with the fishermen as they work with the turtles, explain what is happening to turtles worldwide, show them how best to free the enmeshed turtles and mend their nets, and discuss the possibility of other methods of fishing. They take their time.
I find her in myself; each of us embodies stories of survival. We humans haven't been around for nearly as long as leatherback turtles, but we share some durable characteristics. Turtles and humans have millennia of experience and learning. Each of us has a long history of strength and endurance, and now, the tension and mystery of balancing old and new ways of resourcefulness so that we can survive. Turtles have survived without us and our questions since before we inhabited the earth. Considering that in a few short years we have brought them (and ourselves?) to the brink of extinction, is it really us they need now? Can this pattern be rewoven?