Braiding Sweetgrass, Inner Peace, Terrapin Station, and a Sea Turtle Named Colemanite

A very short story

After I read the book Braiding Sweetgrass, I was fascinated by the Turtle Island creation story and transformed by indigenous views of reciprocity and gratitude. I was also transfixed by the connection between humans and other living organisms in indigenous cultures (I am an ecologist by training, but this book deepened my perspective, and now I pay much closer attention to nature).

I was going through a very difficult job situation that caused intense, even disabilitating anxiety. I tried to heal by kayaking around Lake Jeanette where I live. I would paddle around thanking the herons, cormorants, ducks, geese, insects and various tree species for sharing their lake home with me in honor of Braiding Sweetgrass. They seemed to reciprocate that appreciation.

These gratitude-inspired trips on my kayak did faciliate a sense of inner peace They may have saved me.

The inner peace I was seeking during this hurricane seemed similar to how Terrapin Station is portrayed in the Graeful Dead’s song with that name. The song declares that some rise, some fall, and some climb to get there. I accepted during these trips that, unfortunately, I had to fall.

As I paddled around the lake, I loudly sang the following stanza from the song Terrapin Station. I suspect the herons probably got a little sick of the song. I would also kayak at sunset and the Lake Jeanette skypainter truly lit up the sky with inspiring use of color most every night. So, these words from the song made sense.

Inspiration, move me brightly, light the song with sense and color

Hold away despair, more than this I will not ask

Faced with mysteries dark and vast, statements just seem vain at last

Some rise, some fall, some climb, to get to Terrapin

Several students that were close to me to took a class together with a different professor on the biology of sea turtles. As part of the class, they got to work at sea turtle rehabilitation clinic. While they were there, a turtle came in that needed care. The students were given the chance to name the turtle after a mineral. They named it the mineral “Colemanite” after me. They even called themselves the “Coleman Clan.”

Colemanite recovered quickly and they got to release him back into the Atlantic Ocean. Now I imagine that somewhere out in the sea is a sea turtle at peace, named for me, with a tracking system that someone is watching. I hope I will see my doppelganger Colemanite at Terrapin Station some day.

PS- the picture accompanying the post is Colemanite