Honeymoon for One: Saying Yes to Flippered Warrior Wisdom

Surely, it’s gone by now, I thought, reading the comments beneath the Instagram post. There I was overlooking the inky skyline from my balcony on the Fourth of July. Ferg had long been snoozing on the sofa inside, missing the fireworks I could see along the horizon line sixteen floors up. Like pops of confetti to the soundtrack of sirens wailing.

Who wants to rent our Maui condo in two weeks? Block to the beach. $100/night, an acquaintance from high school had written.

In a trailing thread people wrote “Wish we could!” or “Have plans already, dang!” But surely someone had called dibs by now. I took a sip of my sauvignon blanc as a fleeting, ridiculous idea shot through my brain.

I washed the dishes, giving it a solid hour. YOLO, I declared as I typed, Any chance it’s still free?

Almost immediately, a message appeared. It’s yours if you want it!

I checked with a few of my confidantes to see if they’d be in, but kept running into the same response: I already have plans.

So that left: me. Why yes, I would gladly take myself on my own honeymoon adventure. Of course, that would mean leaving Ferg. More than 12 hours of air travel was out of the question for my little guy.

The quickening pangs buzzing inside me weren't new. For the past few years, I’d been worried about leaving town without my senior citizen – what if something horrific were to happen? And I wasn’t there? I was well versed by friends that you can’t live in constant fear of “what if’s” Katie. This, I later realized, was a form of pre-grieving.

The in-flight magazine boasted trips of a lifetime on its cover. Nestled in the pages was a tale from a travel blogger spending three days in Maui. I saturated myself in his words, sinking beneath the warm turquoise waters as he spied an ancient resident of the reef within the first few minutes of his kayaking journey: a coveted Hawksbill sea turtle. Incredible. How can you look down and just happen to see a turtle like that?

The humidity snatched me in the jetway like a (refreshing) dragon’s breath. Yet I soon felt the sinking feeling again as I drove the tiny clown car past the waving palms and dried grass to the condo.

Would I end up regretting this trip?

On the list of recommendations from my school mate: “head to the secret beach across the street at sunset to watch the sea turtles come up.”

My senior art project was a print of a giant batik sea turtle. I wove sea turtle characters into an eighth grade essay. Our family’s condo in Florida was nicknamed “turtle lane.” Six months prior I turned a dab of leftover clay into… Voila! Sea turtles had me wrapped around their flippers from the start.

By day three of my honeymoon, I had yet to find this clearly too secret beach. But one morning on a 6 a.m. walk (perks of the body still on CST!) something steered me to a hole in the bushes, down a makeshift staircase of rocks into a tiny cove fit for mermaids. I was in the Hawaiian version of The Goonies before I turned my head to the left and gasped.

My treasure. The size of a small coffee table, snoozing in the gray morning mist was a magnificently royal green sea turtle. Her flipper tracks carved into the sand leading from the water’s edge. I suddenly realized we had company. A slender man lay on his elbow in the cave, pants rolled up and hair braided long. He held a finder up to his lips. I swear, he was Captain Jack Sparrow’s scrawny little twin brother.

Scratch Goonies, this was now a downright dream set in Pirates of the Caribbean.

That evening, I packed a picnic dinner and hunkered down at the secret cove’s rocky edge well before sunset. Somehow, three screaming little kids also knew this secret: no doubt a deterrent to a sleepy sea turtle seeking peace.

The sun painted strokes of fuchsia and tangerine across the sky, and no sooner I spied a massive mound bobbing in the water. It drifted to the sand line; my breath stuck in my throat. Oh my God.

Slowly she crept. Closer, closer. And then, she turned back to sea. I cursed under my breath as I walked home.

From that night on, I became the turtle lady. I drove around the island asking locals where to spot them, waking up at 5:30 multiple mornings in hopes of catching another dozing majesty before dawn finding only their tracks left behind.

But there was no giving up. Night five: I slinked down to pirate cove, perched, and waited – the only sound accompanying my breath was the shlup-shlup of the rippling water. Once the fireball had dipped beneath the water, my eyes became glued to all things rock shaped.

The familiar moving mound returned, flying faster through the shallow waves this time. Those tiny flippers did their job expertly heaving her 200-pound body with searing strength. I sat frozen, alone with the master of the sea. Until… two… three…. four turtles now. Five… good Lord.. six.. seven... eight. Eight ancient green sea turtle warriors. And me.

A thousand years’ wisdom collectively sprawled between the rocks and my feet on that graphite velvet carpet.

Moonlight poured through the clouds spotlighting the humps of these heart stealers. I levitated between disbelief and full belief in magic. In what spontaneity can yield. Persistence can bring. And show-stopping nature provides – if we give it the chance.

I signed a contract with my soul that night: to bear the responsibility of keeping this ancient magic alive. I do.

My balcony was volcanic rock, my skyline view: the sea. There were no sirens, no pom poms in the air. Just the fluttering feeling of falling deeply in unconditional love once again.

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