But the moment: In the morning, after hours of egg-birthing, and more time simply lying exhuasted, she began the slow paddle through the thick sand to the sea; swimming toward that moment when the tide, rising, would gently raise her out and across the reef.

To experience her, I followed, parallel, using my elbows as fins. Shortly, half-way, she stopped, and looked over at me. We were less than a metre apart, but in those rhuemy eyes I saw hundreds of years of ages, and the fullness of the ocean. I felt, deeply, that she couldn’t even see me clearly. I was too young, too short-lived, too recent. I moved too fast. Though too much.

And she continued. And I didn’t. Abashed, humbled, I waited and watched her reach the water, heave a great sigh of relief, and wait for the water to rise. Then she paddled, slowly, to the depths beyond the reef.

I agree entirely about the magic of looking at your turtles with the ‘naked eye’ instead of through the lenses of cameras. I also think that part of the ‘sense of wonder and awe’ that we could perhaps recover from the turtles may even be a ‘look back’ at us, and that is something I would not want to miss.