The Packing is Over

Written by Amy Lyon

4:00 PM Thursday July 19

We're sitting at ILM waiting for our plane to Atlanta. (For those of you who don't know what that stands for, it is Wilmington without the W, since Wilmington, Delaware got there first. It's one of the many things I like about my new home and one of my favorite places in Wilmington. One of ILM's amenities is free Internet service.) We may be here a while - weather it sounds like. We may as well get used to weather - Vietnam is forecast to be hot, I mean hot, drippingly humid and wet and there is a tropical storm hovering around Hawaii. But, as Jonathan says, this is all an adventure, however it unfolds.

Like this morning. We are members of the Wrightsville Beach Turtle Volunteer Organization and every Thursday morning at sunrise walk a two mile stretch along the very south end of Wrightsville Beach, from the Local Beach Club past the Oceanic Pier to the tip and back. We are looking for signs that a Loggerhead female had come ashore during the night and laid her eggs. We've had wonderful early morning outings, the very first with Alice who was visiting from NYC. A good sport, she eagerly arose at 5:30 and although we had no turtle sitings, we did see a beautiful sunrise and had a southern breakfast at Causeway Cafe.

Alice, you should have been with us this morning. Admittedly, we were late. It hasn't been all that relaxing getting ready for this trip. We got to the beach at 6:30, and were greeted by a mound of sand with tell tale wooden sticks with neon orange ribbons - - marking a turtle nesting. Soon we were surrounded by three women, turtle volunteers for 5 years now and had never until today found a nest, exclaiming and measuring and pondering. The tracks, as promised ran up from the ocean, like fat tire tracks, to the mound of sand and back down.

Nancy, who runs the Turtle program arrived and decided, because of the proximity of the nest to the ocean, we'd need to relocate so as not to be washed away by a storm. This is only done under extreme circumstances, since it is best not to disturb the nest. She donned her plastic gloves and we all started to dig. Dig carefully. We unearthed a full nest with 129 eggs and Nancy gingerly transferred them to a plastic pail and subsequently created a new nest further up the beach tucked into a dune. We'll start babysitting the nest September 19.

We take this as a good omen for our trip.