Sometimes life presents poetry unannounced and unadorned. Be open to it.
About halfway up Mexico’s west coast is a sleepy little fishing village called Barra de Navidad. A couple of miles north lies Melaque, a larger market town popular with snowbirding Canadians. The two towns are connected by a road, but they also lie at opposite ends of a sweeping bay. If you’re not in a hurry, you can walk from one to the other along the beach, a pristine sweep of white sand bordered by slumbering Pacific on one side and a broad, grassy stretch of sand dunes on the other. The sand dunes are home to a nature reserve dedicated to protecting endangered sea turtles, which nest there.
One bright, sunny, perfectly Mexican morning, my wife and I were walking that strip, heading north from Barra to take in the market at Melaque. The beach was not crowded; there were a few walkers, and an occasional determined runner. (The soft, deep sand made walking difficult, running even more so.) The air was sharp and bright, with the supernatural clarity that Mexican mornings can have.
About halfway around the bay, our attention was attracted by a small disturbance in the sand ahead of us. Something was churning the surface, kicking up tiny bursts of sand. As we got closer, we observed a baby sea turtle, all shell and flippers, resolutely ploughing a ragged little furrow through the soft, shifting sand. Its tiny flippers flailed and pushed as it inched its way down the bank towards the lapping shore.
The work looked tiring, the journey long, the destination still very distant. On the vast open stretch of beach, the tiny creature looked terribly vulnerable. (I recalled nature films I’d seen as a child lamenting how few sea turtles survive the perilous trek from nest to sea; the majority perish before they reach the water.)
As we got closer, it was obvious that this one was going to make it. It shuffled and shouldered its way down the last stretch of sand and elbowed its way into the shallows. Where, suddenly, it took wing. The tiny creature worked its flippers tentatively for a few strokes, found its rhythm, then vigorously propelled itself off into the wild, wet blue yonder, free as an uncaged bird in its watery world.
We stood there for awhile, pondering this rare and wonderful sight, and then carried on our way.
A short time later, we espied another disturbance down the beach. This one was much larger, and more clumsy. It was a group of three people: two women supporting a young man, one of whose legs was dangling in an injured, useless way. One of the women was young – his wife possibly, or a sister – and the other seemed to be his mother. The crippled young man had his arms around both their shoulders as they struggled down the beach supporting him between them, slipping and sliding in the soft, giving sand.
They reached a certain point and then turned and walked down to the water’s edge, the women carefully supporting the young man with every faltering step. There, the women released the young man, and he half hobbled, half hopped into the shallows. When he was shin deep into the water, he threw himself forward into the surf.
In the water, his infirmity vanished. With powerful strokes of his arms he thrust out into the water, strong, confident and completely in command. He swam, luxuriating in his power and freedom, out into the sun kissed sea. On the shore, his women waited with expressions that mingled joy and sorrow, awaiting his return, Assuming, of course, that he would.
We continued on our way to Melaque, tethered to the earth on our heavy legs, awkward visitors in a foreign land.