U/B 18: Magic, logic, and legend (2024)

Here’s your weekly reminder to choose what serves you. What might be useful and beautiful for you today?

Hi!

Useful / Beautiful is 18 this week. Officially an adult. Which means it ought to be more mature, with fewer childish notions like magic or believing impossible things. Except, you know that won’t be the case.

I think my job here (writing to you) is to enroll you in possibility. Curiosity adds color to our overly logical lives. We could stand to have more reminders that we don’t know as much as we think we do. We’ll never know it all.

And yet, here we are. We make decisions — however informed or uninformed — doing our best to navigate life. That’s the point. To live.

In the spirit of magic and curiosity, here’s a story about a creature I met this week.

I often spend more time in my head than in the present moment, so it was interesting to spend a few hours in the swamp on Tuesday looking for a mystical creature.

That wasn’t my intention.

Sometimes you find what you didn’t know to look for. Remember how I once found a diamond wedding ring in the yard? There’s something about perfect circles in nature that catch my eye. Bottle caps, washers, coins, etc. So when I saw a ring just off the boardwalk in my neighborhood swamp1, I assumed it was trash.

But then it blinked and retreated under the algae-slick surface of the pond.

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WTF was that?

I’ve definitely seen things that others have not. But I’ve never felt as nutty as I did then, asking a nearby birder with a camera if he’d come train his lens on the spot where “I saw a strange creature disappear underwater”.

12:24 pm.

See that pile of sludge? Come down, then to the right, by those sticks. By that pond scum. It was right there. A creature with a ring through its nose.

My new friend patiently pointed his camera at the murk. But nothing appeared. I thanked him for indulging me.

Something is there. I know what I saw.

I was starting to sweat and turn pink from the midday sun so I went home for lunch, put on sunscreen, packed a bag, then went back to the swamp.

1:55 pm. Still nothing.

I walked further up the boardwalk to wait in the shade. To my right, a bull frog flopped about like it was stuck. Which it was… Stuck in the mouth of a snake. As I snapped a photo, three whitetail deer crashed through the trees, startling me and a family of grackles.

Geez, nature. You’re really showing off today.

2:05 pm. At this point, I’m convinced that nature or the universe is trying to tell me something. That surely I’m in the presence of magic. The signs are there: hidden treasure, underwater, large creature, invisible mysteries.

I’m thinking about trolls under bridges and the pig from The Owl and the puss*cat:

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

Fun fact! I have an Owl and the puss*cat collection, courtesy of my husband. The poem by Edward Lear is in the public domain, so numerous illustrators have published versions. Jan Brett (see photo) is my favorite.

2:10 p.m. I decided this thing must grant wishes.

Hmmm. Why do I need this? Am I so bored with reality?

That priest I met on a plane last month told me that God (or the universe, if you prefer) is always speaking but it’s up to you to listen and act.

So I listened. And watched. And waited.

2:15 pm. It’s got a be a turtle, right? It’s not a fish or it wouldn’t need to come up for air. But there’s no sign of its body.

I tapped “How long can snapping turtles hold their breath?” into Google on my phone and discover that I might be waiting as long as 50 minutes. If I’m right. Which — now that logic is starting to creep in — I must be (right) because there are no such things as mystical wish-granting swamp creatures with nose-rings.

2:20 pm. There’s something here. A story, at least.

Maybe asking the universe for a sign is just a way of giving ourselves permission to trust what we feel in our gut but don’t think we should feel.

2:24 p.m. OMG.

Omg omg omg THERE IT IS.

Slowly, a shiny silver ring about the size of a half dollar rises up. It pauses. Still under the water. There’s a reptilian eye looking at me.

I awkwardly hold my phone lens up to the binoculars to get a closer picture2.

The ring continues to rise, slowing breaking the surface without even a ripple, attached to the face of what appears to be a larger-than-average snapping turtle.

I watched it retreat then surface for another half hour, giddy each time the ring would appear.

Am I the only one who’s ever seen this thing? Surely if other people knew, there’d be a legend about this part of the greenway. Should I start a legend?

Thoughts race through my head as I walked home.

2:46 pm. I texted my husband “there is a mystical creature living in the swamp” to which he demands proof. I send a mysterious photo of just the eye first, trying to play up the magic.

He just replies, “Is that some type of turtle? Did it get hooked? Try to eat something? Poor turtle.”

I go to bed wondering how my first response could be “It’s a magic turtle”, and not the reality of a hurt and traumatized turtle with a piece of metal through its face. What does that say about my headspace today?

10:04 am. I’m back. It’s there.

It rises, breathes for a minute, then retreats.

It’s pretty incredible that I saw it — let alone two days in a row — just feet from the boardwalk. The swamp is extensive.

How is it in the exact same spot? Is it dying?

Yesterday, the turtle was magical. Today, it’s dying.

What am I doing here?

Maybe I’m connecting with this [potentially dying] creature.

It’s not doing anything. It’s definitely being. I could stand to just be.

I document, write in my journal. In my head. In the swamp.

10:14 am. It rises. I watch it breathe. I breathe.

10:21 am. This time as it’s rising the ring is coated in pond slime like a soap bubble. It pops a second later.

10:36 am. It rises.

I’m not going to be able to walk here ever again without looking for it.

That’s how it always goes. If I find something unusual, that place forever becomes “the place where [unusual thing] can be found.” Snakes, 4-leaf clovers, treasures.

Maybe that is why I am here. To find a legend. Even if it is only ever mine.

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Later that day my kids would not visit the swamp with me.

There’s no such thing as magic turtles, mom.

They’re right. The turtle isn’t magic. My experience of it was magic.

But that’s what makes something legendary, right? An experience worth sharing?

I went back again this morning, both wanting and not wanting to see it. It wasn’t there. Either it moved significantly or finally stopped taking breaths. A part of me doesn’t want to know. If I never see it again then it can stay magic, living forever in my memory.

What do you think? Have you ever had a strange or magical experience with a creature?