Turtles All the Way Down

While bicycling in the rolling farmlands of rural southern Indiana, I managed to almost get hit by a deer, a goat, and a Camaro that sounded like a gargling whale. Although born with a penis, I have never figured out how to extract manly joy from loud engine noises.  I remember running around as a kid saying “vroom” and imagining how much fun driving would be, but that was before I knew about traffic or carbon monoxide.  When my kids were young, I found it helpful to teach them the difference between toys and tools around the house while simultaneously enjoying their disregard for the distinction.  But cars have always felt more like tools than toys to me and recreational driving seems about as much fun as recreational hammering.

The near head-butting by a goat was a bit more interesting than the Camaro, despite the lower risk of needing an orthopedist and a transfusion.  The goat, leaping out of the tall roadside grasses at my front wheel, was truly unexpected.  I had been riding slowly toward an unhidden and obvious goat who was standing in the road making weird rectangular eye contact with me when a second goat burst out of the tall roadside grasses to my right and hopped over my front tire.  Im not sure if this was some kind of goat prank (you know; kidding around) or if the hidden goat was coming to the rescue of his hapless companion.

For most of the rest of the ride, I enjoyed the redwinged black birds, chickadees, vireos, and other field-dwelling birds, shooting through the tall grasses and fields and the occasional groundhog engaged in apparent contemplative mindfulness and nature connection.  Those guys never seem particularly busy and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that most of them are independently wealthy.

Near the end of the ride, I was on a long straight road that cut through some corn fields.  It was still early summer so the plants were short and green and not yet the roadside walls of columnar yellow stalks they would be in late summer.  On the horizon, I saw a semi truck coming my direction and about 100 feet ahead of myself, I saw a turtle crawling unhurriedly across the same  lane.

I have a particular anger about roadkill.  I don’t think you should ever casually break something you can’t fix, and the idea of unthinkingly destroying something as miraculous as a turtle for the sake of going to buy cheetohs or a nice chest of drawers (or whatever) makes me angry.  Wildlife has too long been a sacrifice to the petty human god of efficiency.

I’ve ridden and raced bicycles most of my life and I can go fast if I need to.  So I changed gears, put my head down and shot in to the other lane, scooping the turtle up and depositing him safely in the shoulder of the road just a few seconds before the semi roared past with its thirty thousand pounds of noisy self importance and exhaust.

As I continued my ride home, I realized that from the turtle’s perspective, something uniquely miraculous had happened.  If this turtle thinks at roughly the same speed that he ambulates, then from his perspective he moved from the road to the corn field instantaneously.  From a turtle time frame, this turtle had effectively teleported.

I have to also assume that turtles, as a species, are incapable of lying.  Humans, with their perceptions of scarcity, have all kinds of evolutionary reasons to be sneaky and duplicitous, but turtles not so much.  With their ability to hide inside themselves, I imagine solipsism is more their social dilemma than deceit.  So, when this turtle encounters other turtles in the future, there’s no reason to think his story about teleporting will be heard as anything other that the truth.  Given the speed of turtle communication, it may take a few millennia for the word to get out, but slowly and surely, turtles may come to believe that teleportation is possible.

Belief is a powerful thing and turtles have outlived many, many other species with their patience and persistence.  It is reasonable to assume that turtle’s belief in teleportation could eventually evolve into the ability to pop in and out of spacetime much like they do with their own shell, given enough time.  Certainly, evolution has produced equally miraculous spectacles over and over again. Why not a telepurtle?

Indoor time is so different than outdoor time.  Outside, I am expansive, irreverent, and patient.  Inside, I am hurried, task driven, and rigid.  I look at the kinds of notes I make in the small journal I carry biking and hiking and it’s full of nonsense and wild speculation.  In my larger bedside journal, I find lists of things I have done and places I have been.  My house is truly a box that I think better outside of.  As long as useless thoughts about turtles are better anyhow.