How a Manhattan Turtle Trampled My Self-Doubt
Are you waiting around for the perfect conditions to bring your project to life? Here’s how a chance meeting with a 6-inch reptile gave me the courage to just do it
Being stuck feels all kinds of terrible — you know it, you’ve been there. For much too long. So as we’re crawling out of this Corona-shaped hole back into life, you’ll understand the urgency I felt to give a helpful nudge to a turtle I came upon in New York City’s Central Park.
I had been sitting on a lawn right by the busy Park Drive, doing the sweetest kind of nothing, when suddenly, a hazy picture of struggle crept into the corner of my eye. There she was, a turtle, butt-stuck in a hole. She was bobbing around, seemingly desperate to get out. So this city kid went to get a stick, arrogantly thinking that nature needed my help. Just a little lift from under the butt, and the turtle would be able to take a walk on the wild side again.
Plotting to assault the turtle’s posterior, I did not deserve the beauty I was about to see. The turtle wiggled out a perfect little egg. I was both paralyzed by awe and ashamed for intruding. I had no business being part of this moment but hoped she took it like a New Yorker: No privacy, whatta y’gonna do?!
