Turtle In the Park

box turtle 2
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

The picture and the title kind of say it all, actually. I woke up in a bad mood, because it is kind of getting to be that time of the month when I want to kill, kill, kill and also because I'm feeling overwhelmed, swamped and too busy. I was thinking about all the ten bazillion things I have to do and instead of making me happy, it was making me miserable and tired, so I took hideous Theo to the park for an hour. I was trudging grumpily along trying to achieve pure Zen walking meditation mind and failing spectacularly when along came Turtle, and that's satori right there.

I love box turtles; I have loved them since I was a small child and we used to catch them and put them in elaborate cages made out of cardboard boxes and chickenwire from which they would inevitably have escaped the next morning. Last summer or the summer before, I found one up at Bent Creek who was patiently trying to get up a steep hill into the woods. He kept slipping back down, so I gave him a lift in the direction he was going and he thanked me: the next day there was a box turtle in my vegetable garden, where no turtle had ever been seen before or since. Once too I was scared shitless by a box turtle. I was out hiking on the bike trail in Maryland that runs along the Gunpowder Falls when I heard a tremendous crashing coming through the underbrush at me. I thought it was probably a rabid dog or raccoon or, god knows, some kind of horrible transdimensional creature of the vortex and I was terrified, I mean my heart was thumping and I thought it was probably all over for me. It was a box turtle making his way noisily through the tall weeds.

Yay box turtles and their ability to knock you out of the everyday!