Levera Beach stretches before us in a large wide curve, but we can’t see it in the darkness. It is ten o’clock at night. We follow the guide’s red flashlight over uneven sand and clumps of seaweed. The waves sound large crashing to our right. Up ahead, a leatherback turtle is digging a two-foot, four-inch hole in the sand to lay her eggs. It is Mother’s Day, and I am thinking about what we bring and what we leave.
At the northern end of Grenada where we stand, Levera beach curves around the 450-acre Levera National Park. Our evening there started earlier with a visit to the pond and mangrove wetlands, which cover most of the national park. We climbed into the observation tower and watched tarpon rising in the pond. They are heavy-jawed, silver fish the size of a third-grader and make big splashes. In the past few weeks, Sam had two opportunities to wrestle these fish on sturdy hooks, thanks to an avid fisherman and good friend here.
Around the pond, red mangrove trees reach their leggy stalks into the clear, tannic water. Andrew pointed out their seeds, which begin sprouting while still held on the parent tree. When they drop into the water, they have a headstart—roots and a shoot—and grow readily. Like all wetlands, they filter water and protect shorelines and harbor many species. Andrew had been studying and birdwatching in these habitats for months.
We left the mangroves and pond for a Levera Beach picnic. Surprisingly, our kids consented to eat peanut butter and jelly/nutella sandwiches yet again. When we arrived at the beach, we recognized the view of Sugar Loaf Island. It is a favorite subject of local artist Doliver Moraine.
Before visiting Levera Pond, we had visited Doliver at his studio, which sits along a dirt road, surrounded by his sculptures and paintings on plywood. He welcomed us, especially since Andrew had visited him on a hike the week before. We chatted about Doliver’s work and how he sells it at galleries in town, how Maurice Bishop who was a nice guy and gave long speeches without notes, and how the government built him a new little house since his old one was rocking on its stilts. When not chatting, Doliver paints. He paints Grenadian scenes and fish and people in his signature style, capturing movement and character in few brush strokes.
He does portraits, often many portraits of the same person, such as Maurice Bishop. We added one of his Bishop portraits to our collection, and also his version of Mona Lisa, which seemed both un-Grenadian and completely Grenadian, and either way I could not stop looking at her because her expression was inscrutable and maybe she was derived from Leonardo da Vinci or maybe I saw her on the bus yesterday.
So we sat down for our beach picnic with our minds full of mangroves and art. We sat at the same picnic table where we would later wait two hours in the dark, salty wind for turtles to arrive on the beach.
Which is where we are sitting when the news of a turtle’s arrival comes from researchers up the beach. We dutifully stay behind the guide on our way up the beach towards the red flashlights that seem very far away. We are rewarded long before we reach the red flashlights. The guide stops and throws back his arms. He has spotted something unexpected: the tracks of newly hatched turtles across the sand.
Helpless, we coo in delight when he finds one baby doing its lift-flops across the soft sand. It seems impossibly tiny. It flaps and flaps, going faster when the sand becomes wet and smooth. Then the ocean reaches out and takes it.
We bobble down the beach with each footfall landing at different heights in the sand, walking even more cautiously behind the guide now that we know baby turtles could be crossing. Later, the researchers will scan the area and retrieve struggling baby turtles. They will hold them only temporarily and release them on the sand, though, so they imprint on this beach and begin their journey properly. And so they know where to return.
Leatherback sea turtles return to lay their eggs on the same beach where they hatched. They are the largest turtles on the planet, weighing 500 to 1500 pounds. When we finally approach the female leatherback on the beach, she looks like a boulder. Her size is an astonishing contrast to the wee hatchling.
She is using her hind flippers to dig a hole two feet, four inches deep. Then she lays her round, glistening eggs. I can hear her grunt-breaths as she lays the eggs. The research crew reaches below her hind flippers to remove the eggs into a bucket. They will immediately relocate them up the beach where they’re less likely to wash away than the unstable site she happened to choose. These turtles are endangered; we can’t risk more loss of turtles than what happens when they drown in fishing equipment or lose access to crucial nesting beaches.
The leatherback covers the hole with impressive dedication anyway. She will likely return in a week or so to lay more eggs, and could lay several nests of eggs this season. Then she will migrate—often 10,000 miles—foraging far into the northern hemisphere. Her diet will consist mostly of jellyfish, with mouthparts designed to consume gelatinous prey.
Now, her hind flippers scoop over sand, then pat it firm. When she pounds her flippers down, and they sweep back the sand, you can feel the vibration under your feet. We watch, enraptured. She goes around and around the area. Thick tears pour from her eyes, flushing out excess salt and sand.
Finally, she mimics the hatchling’s locomotion—lift, flop—but slow and lumbering until the waves crash over her. She disappears from the island. Just as we are about to do.
We are leaving in a few days. Unlike the leatherbacks, I do not know if we’ve left anything behind that could hatch into something beautiful. I do know that this island has imprinted upon us. I will feel an instinct to return.
For now, we are packing in the final visits to snorkel the Hog Island reef and to swim in a cold jungle waterfall. Stella’s neighbor friend will join us on both adventures, as she joined us on our adventure to Levera. And to Grand Etang. And Mt. Qua Qua. She is imprinted on our hearts, too.
In the last day, we will pack our actual bags. We will roll up Doliver’s paintings and nestle them among our often-worn T-shirts and carefully selected seashells. What we will bring most importantly, are stories and images. We will carry home questions about what it means to be a person in this world of differing worlds. We will wonder how to live fully and gently, while protecting what needs protected. Thick tears will pour from my eyes as I tamp down our experience, preparing to leave.
We will have attachments to mangrove swamps wrapping around tea-brown ponds. And reefs full of fish we never could have imagined but somehow live there. And boulder-sized turtles who heave themselves onto the familiar, yet little-known territory of beaches to leave something of themselves for the future.
If we have kept our eyes and hearts open, we will arrive home and have some struggle in making sense of home anymore. There will be questions with no answers. We have had such privilege in being guests on this island of beauty and contrasts. We will carry our privilege back into our lives at home in upstate New York with a lifelong opportunity to try to understand what it all means.
For the four of us, there will always be a time before Grenada and a time after Grenada. We are so excited to come home. We will be unpacking for a long time.
