'Bearing His Hard and Chambered Hurt'

Nearly forty years ago I drove to Beaversprite, a nature reserve near Dolgeville in upstate New York, in the foothills of the Adirondacks, to interview the caretaker. The founder, known for taming beavers and permitting some to live in her house, had recently died and the fate of the sanctuary was uncertain. I spent much of the day speaking with the caretaker and tramping around the grounds, and late in the afternoon started the drive back to Albany. 

On the way, at a deep dip in the road, I watched the driver ahead of me swerve abruptly to the right. He hit something in the road, a dark object, and it spun off into the roadside grass. He drove away and out of curiosity I pulled over to investigate. In the grass was a mud turtle, already heading for the muddy ditch paralleling the road. I picked him up and found only a scuff on the right rear portion of his shell. He seemed otherwise unharmed. The malevolent driver had aimed and missed, delivering a glancing blow with his tire. I set the turtle back in the grass, aiming him at the ditch, and off he went.

 

If I were to have an animal guide, according to Native American custom, it would be a turtle. I admire their patient gift for momentum. They keep moving slowly and with focus, like me. They are nature’s implacable Stoics. Only death – perhaps delivered by an automobile tire – slows them down. I can’t imagine ever wanting to kill a turtle. In “The Mud Turtle,” Howard Nemerov writes:

 

“. . . there is no help for him

As he makes it to his feet again

And drags away to the meadows edge.

We see the tall grass open and wave

Around him, it closes, he is gone

Over the hill toward another water,

Bearing his hard and chambered hurt

Down, down, down, beneath the water,

Beneath the earth beneath. He takes

A secret wound out of the world.”

 

[Go here to read a selection of turtle stories solicited by Levi Stahl, including one I submitted about a memorable encounter with a snapping turtle.]