Daring to Let Our Music Out

He had seen a newly hatched snapping turtle with a shell about the size of a toonie at the edge of a swampy pond the week earlier.  So when we came across the pond on our spring walk, he looked for it again.  We saw a leopard frog but no baby turtle.

Walking along the dirt road about forty feet past the pond I noticed something at my feet.  Stooping down to investigate more closely, I discovered that it was another baby turtle.  My partner squatted down and picked it up to see if it was alive.  Sadly, it was not.

Just a few inches away was a shallow hole in the road.  Perhaps this was the nest that the turtles had hatched from.  Turtles that hatch in the spring are from eggs that were laid the previous year.  They overwinter deep in the earth and then fight their way through the soil to the air before finding their home in the water.  This nest was on the road that becomes the cross- country ski trail in the winter and the soil had had a heavy snow pack and lots of ski traffic on it all winter.

Wondering if there were live turtles trapped under the earth, he started digging with his hands, gently removing soil, hoping for a miracle.  At first, he found turtles that had fully hatched but had not been able to make it through the hard-packed soil alive.  As his excavation continued, he found turtles that were partly hatched, their little heads emerging from the shells.  The deeper he dug, the turtles were totally inside the eggs.  But he kept hoping for life even in the face of certain death.

There was no miracle that day.  When he had finished digging, there were about two dozen tiny snapping turtles lying on the dirt of the road.  No happy ending, just the reality of how our seemingly harmless activities of cross-country skiing had made it impossible for the hatchlings to break out of their earthen nest.

The image stayed with me and I pondered what I had seen.  It seemed like such a waste, all that unrealized potential at a time when turtles are endangered.  My partner came up with several solutions to prevent this from happening again while I waited for my own message to emerge.

Later that week, it came to me.  Nature is nature and most snapping turtles are predated while still unformed matter in the eggs.  Many more are hit by cars while crossing roads to lay eggs.  The intersection of turtles and people is one story.  But the story that came to me, came in a phrase, “dying with your music still in you.”  I thought about the potentials inside of all of us that want to be born, the music in each of us. The hard-packed dirt reminded me of the weight of responsibilities that can at time feel crushing.  At times, there is nothing left at the end of the day for myself, for birthing my own creations.  Sometimes, the news creates such fear that we “turtle”, crawl into our shells in a seemingly safe place.  There are times for such a retreat, but if hiding becomes the norm, then part of us dies.

And so, in this strange time that gets stranger every day, where the dirt keeps falling on our heads, threatening to bury us, I resolved to use my voice to speak my truth, to use my creativity, to use my resources, to let my music out.  This is not a time to hide under our bushels or to give up.  Just because we don’t seem to know where we are going doesn’t mean that we can’t use our creativity to find new ways of being together.

Today, I got an email from the David Suzuki Foundation celebrating the good news about a new library in Varennes, Quebec which is just south of Montreal.  The library is net zero for energy use through solar and geothermal energy.  It feels like something from the future.  Sounds too good to be true?  Check it out here and dare to dream!