Paul Spencer Sochaczewski

Life and Death on Shiva’s Beach

Posted on 25. Jun, 2010 by Paul Sochaczewski in Articles, Environment

 

REVELATION ON SHIVA’S BEACH
A place of death and life, despair and hope

 

PULAU ENU, Aru Islands, Indonesia

DAWN

A milky sunrise on a deserted beach, watching a miracle.

I walk, alone, along the beach on the windward side of this small island, closer to Australia than the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, blown sand gritting my contact lenses, looking for the tractor-like tracks that indicate an adult meter-long turtle has visited the low dunes to lay her eggs.

* * *

As the sun rises, a bunch of just-hatched turtles, each shorter than my thumb, scamper like reptilian puppies to the sea.  After they all reach the ocean safely, swim in their turtle-infused water to wash off the sand.  I want to speak with my travel companion, Alfred Russel Wallace. Alfred, I half expect to see you straggling out of the scraggly forest, in need of a bath and English-speaking company.

Back at the nest site a straggler is emerging from the quickly-heating sand a half-hour behind his nest-mates.  Call it biology, or call it a minor miracle, his appearance is both startling and comforting.

I dub this curious birthing ground Shiva’s Beach.  A site of creation.

The laggard baby green turtle marches clumsily on tiny flippers but, with determination activated by eons of ancestral behavior, he reaches the sea.  He swims aggressively, sticking his little head out of the water every few seconds.  The water is clear and warm and benign, free of hungry fish or crabs, the sky blue and free of turtle-loving gulls.

The little fellow swims toward a group of seven fishing boats anchored a hundred meters off shore.  I tell him not to, but he doesn’t listen.  But the sea is big, and perhaps he will pass his life free of hassle. Eventually he paddles out of sight.  A boy.  He doesn’t really know where he is going, but he knows he has a journey to make.  I wish him well, as much for my sake as for his.

From chaos
Shiva creates
Trident aloft

MID-MORNING

Too hot to walk, too hot to think, too hot to sleep.

I’ve been thinking about many things on this trip.  How is it, Alfred, that we human beings will do the following:  Travel halfway around the world and suffer physical discomfort in order to reach a beach where green turtles come ashore to lay their eggs.  Why would we — human beings — watch another creature’s life cycle — laying and hatching — with such emotional intensity and intellectual curiosity?  Why would it disturb us that others of our race — the Buginese from distant south Sulawesi — hunt these scarce creatures and why others, the Balinese in this case — pay good money for turtle flesh and enjoy eating this ancient reptile?  Why do we have such protective thoughts about another species?

Scampering
Roaring
Shiva nods, and moves on

LATE AFTERNOON

Just before rose-colored fireworks.

Alfred, I walk along this beach of life and smell death.

Like a dung beetle I am drawn to the rotting carcasses and bleached dog-sized skulls of green turtles which have been slit open by fishermen desirous of the eggs in the reptile’s egg cavity, fishermen either too impatient or too greedy to be satisfied with catching some of the eggs as they plop out during the normal laying cycle.  The tasty turtle flesh has been left uneaten and has begun to rot; the only part used is the stomach, which makes a fine bait.

Earlier today the research group I was with had chased reputedly vicious Indonesian fishermen from Sulawesi who lay nets to capture green turtles in the waters of this unguarded nature reserve.  From a distance of a hundred meters we saw that their boat was full of live turtles, perhaps a hundred of the animals, all destined for Bali.  Another western conservationist and I urged the Indonesian captain to give chase.  The Indonesian captain made a half-hearted attempt, but his heart wasn’t in it.  “Those men are armed and dangerous,” said a frustrated Ating Sumantri, who is in charge of the Indonesian government’s efforts to conserve sea turtles.  “We don’t have any soldiers, no weapons.”

Just then Abdul Fata Rharusun, an Indonesian game warden, jumped overboard and swam ashore to rescue the turtles which had been abandoned on the island when the poachers first saw our boat.  Fata flipped over eight of the 100 kilogram (220 pound) animals and watched them escape into the sea.  Then three grounded poachers, who had been abandoned on the island when their boat first spotted us and took off, jumped out of the brush and chased him.  Fata himself then had to escape into the woods until we could come ashore and rescue him.

What is a turtle worth?  Worth getting stabbed for?  Worth shooting someone for?

* * *

Later, in Bali, I wanted to know just how important turtle meat is in that island’s Shiva-oriented  Hindu culture.  This was not merely being environmentally-politically correct.  It’s also good conservation to understand what emotional and spiritual values lie behind what seems to outsiders to be senseless consumption — some 18,000 turtles a year, according to one estimate.

“Turtle meat adds something to our ceremonies,” explained I.B. Pangdjaja, head of public relations at the Bali governor’s office.

“But it’s not essential to the religious ceremony?” I asked.

“Like you eating turkey at Thanksgiving.  Except it makes you strong.”

Odd, isn’t it.  Transported to Bali for satay, or worse, slit open for their eggs, and left to die on the beach.  And then, against all odds, life goes on — more turtles come ashore to lay their eggs.  Because we will stay on Pulau Enu this particular night the bad guys will stay away, and just maybe tonight’s crop of eggs will hatch.  Shiva thrives on contradictions.  Do you need to destroy before you can create?

Shiva dances on a beach of skulls
Ecstatic
Life breathes below

NIGHT

With stars that make me wish I were a poet.

Alfred, it is a night with stars like I’ve rarely seen, and I half expect you to appear out of the shadows, gaunt and curious and quietly eager to join me as I examine small piles of sand that indicate one of these turtles has laid her eggs below the high water line, where they are certain to become water-logged and spoiled.

She has camouflaged her nest by shuffling sand, but I finally unearth her eggs, slimy with turtle juices, and transplant them into another hole I dig a few meters further inland, safe from the high tide.

Shiva dances
To music wild
Does the breeze whisper?
Hope will come with the dawn

 

SOMEWHERE THE SUN IS SHINING

Is it really darkest before the dawn?

A shooting star.  I can never think of a wish fast enough, and the opportunity for good luck goes up in flames, as it were.

Too easy to get depressed, thinking about the unlikelihood of achieving conservation.

Too easy to get bogged down in reflection.

I feel like a teenager considering a blind date.  Alfred, if you were here, would we get along?  Would we have the same sense of humor?  Would I be awed? Would I try to impress you with my amusing traveller’s tales? Would you think me frivolous and annoying?

And what if, it’s possible, you were boring?

You were cursed with a free-range brain, especially when you joined the oh-so-popular Victorian-era salon-crowd who believed in Spiritualism. What’s your opinion about spirits now that you’re dead?

* * *

I put my ear to the sand, like the storybooks say the Native Americans used to do to track deer.  Is that a scratching I hear, is that a baby turtle boxing his way out of his shell, trying to climb over his brothers and sisters and claw his way through half-a-meter of sand to reach the surface?  What a tough way to begin life.  But maybe that just makes the little critter tough enough to survive the rest of life’s challenges.

Shiva is god, is he not?
Like so many of his kin,
The trident smites both ways
Gleaming, nevertheless

 

BETWEEN LATE AND LATER

Where have the stars gone?

I stretch; my back aches.  What time is it?  The battery in my watch is old, and the night-light on my Casio hardly illuminates the dial; I should have traded it to Zakarias for that bird of paradise skin.

I fell asleep during a left brain-right brain shootout.  Kill anyone who kills a turtle, my emotional right brain screamed.  But then my left brain kicked in and argued that wildlife trade is inevitable  — people are inherently evil and greedy, aren’t they?  No, of course not, the right brain said, annoyed that the left brain could be so stupid.  Left brain: we are Homo consumerensis; we want more stuff, more money, more success, all the time. Right brain: Deep in our soul sits a little elf reminding us to do what’s good.

This unanswerable internal debate mercifully stopped while I dozed in the shelter of a fallen tree.

I wait for turtles.  They will come.  I scan the beach, trying to decide which direction to walk.

I stand and stretch.  A burst of heat lightning screams through the light clouds, and I think I see someone approaching from the far side of the beach.  He is a couple of hundred meters away.  He carries no flashlight.  Must be a poacher who thinks that all the scientists are in bed.  I’ve rarely met such a complacent group  — with the exception of Ating Sumantri, the Indonesians in our team are content to tag a couple of turtles each night and head back to the comfort of the camp on the other side of the island.

Okay, if it’s a poacher, I’ll wait for him.  If I catch him and he has turtle eggs — or worse, if I catch him killing a turtle — I’ll rugby tackle him and beat him up and be a hero, at least to myself.  That is if he doesn’t beat me up in the process.  Mano-a-mano.

The stranger is tall, walks with a slight stoop. He moves with some stiffness.  Not furtive, as a poacher would be.  Just cautious, looking around.

“Alfred?  Is that you?”

“Good evening, Paul.  It is all right if I address you as Paul?”

“Hello Alfred.”

Without another word he sits next to me on the bleached log.  For a long moment we stare, in parallel, out towards the sea, a crescent moon illuminating a strip of surf.

“It’s been a good trip,” I say finally.

“Yes.”

We watch phosphorescence dazzle the waves.

“Can I ask you something?” I ask Alfred Russel Wallace.  His silence is a yes.  “What do you think of this world?  Is it what you had expected?”

As an answer Alfred offers a whimsical smile, and takes off his tiny John Lennon-like wire-rimmed glasses, similar to those Bruno Manser wore during his six years living with the Penans in the Sarawak rainforest.  Alfred wipes them with a handkerchief he takes from his coat.  He is dressed in a dark cotton and wool jacket, with a linen shirt that once was white.  His clothes smell, but he doesn’t.

“Where are your boots?” I ask.

“Those heavy leather boots, they were my bane.  They became soaked in sea water once too often,” he says, offering a modest glimmer in his eyes.  “I fed them to the sharks.”

We sit silently, watching the stars.

“The Arab astronomers undoubtedly had quite a vigorous imagination in order to visualize animals in the firmament,” Alfred says.  “I am unable myself to see the images without a book that shows where to connect the lines.”

I look for Leo, my constellation.  He looks for his, Capricorn.  All we can make out is Orion, dominating the equatorial sky.  “Don’t you get humbled by all the possible worlds out there?” I ask.

“As a young boy I laid on my back, looking at the stars.  As I suppose all young boys do.  Now I am more interested in what happens here on this planet.  Modern science has discovered some most astounding things.  But still, there are things I dare say we will never figure out.  Right here.”

“Like what?”

“Like the hidden biosphere, deep within the planet, where microbes called hyperthermophiles survive in heat of extraordinary temperature.  Apparently these miniscule natural productions may even constitute a separate kingdom of life.”

“Some scientists say that the existence of these hyperthermophiles could change our view of evolution.  Does that bother you?”

For the first time, Alfred laughed.  “Why should it?  Paul, imagine.  Do you not think that there is something spectacularly appropriate in the fact that a microscopic, anaerobic, heat-loving microbe that derives its very energy from the most inner core of the earth could teach us more about ourselves?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Earlier you asked me about the supernatural force that gives man his unique powers.  Perhaps I was a bit hasty.  Oh, don’t misunderstand my intention.  I believe in that force, and probably always will.  But maybe I was too hesitant in my opinions.”

I cannot believe that Alfred Russel Wallace would admit to being hasty about anything, and I prod him to explain his position.

“I tried to separate that ‘life-force’ from religion.  I was so bungled about wanting to be provocative but also afraid of what havoc I might create.”

“What are you saying Alfred?”

“That the supernatural force which makes people uniquely human is everywhere.  But people get confused; they think I mean religion. People drag their own emotions into the debate.  There’s no dogma, no ritual. Just natural laws we can’t understand.  I know most people don’t understand that, but it’s really as simple as that.  People don’t need all those symbols and myths.”

“You sound like Obi-Wan Kenobi,” I say.  I have to explain the cultural reference.

We watch the sky again.  I teach Alfred a few Beatle songs; he is particularly pleased to learn “Yellow Submarine.”

The wind picks up.  “You know I consulted some mediums and tried to talk with you.”

“Really?” I couldn’t see his face to learn if he was curious or mocking.

“We had a few good conversations.”

“Oh yes?”

“But were you on the other end of the conversation?”

“Teach me another song.”

I start to sing a few bars of “Sounds of Silence.”

I see a falling star but am too slow to make a wish.

“I was able to catch that one,” Alfred says, as if reading my mind.

“What did you wish for?”

“It would invalidate the wish were I to tell you.”  After a while he adds, “but it had something to do with television.”

“Go on.”

“Television, if you think about it, is like this supernatural force.  We accept it, we don’t usually think about it, but if we did accept its existence then we would have to believe that there is a god.  Imagine.  Transmitting an image.  Unbelievable, really.”

“But you believe television exists?”

“Of course.  I watch it.  But I’m blasted if I could explain it to anyone back in the mid-nineteenth century.  I might as well try to explain to them about space travel or computers.”

“So technology is the new religion.”

“No, not by itself.  Technology is the cutting edge of religion, the advertising for religion, but not the religion itself.”

“So, is there a new religion?”

“Listen Paul.  I am merely an unemployed, lonely, and lowly beetle collector.  Why are you asking me all these questions about theology?”

“Come off it, Alfred.”

He sighs.  “I do not understand your world.  Life used to be simple.  Now people have so much more and appear to be so much less happy.”

“Are people really less happy?” I insist.  “Haven’t people always been frustrated with their work, or their homes or the way their husbands and wives look in the morning?  Isn’t the difference now that instead of accepting it people are encouraged to examine it, and by so doing the problems become bigger and more important?”

Alfred scratches his beard, then rubs the bridge of his nose.  “What will happen to the turtles?” he asks.

“They’ll keep on disappearing,” I reply.  “But not entirely.  Nature is too cunning, and the sea is too large.”

“Where do you suppose they go?”

“Just accept it, Alfred.  Don’t try to question everything.  Holoholo e like me ná honu i ka hohonu.”

Alfred looks at me.  “I collected vocabularies of fifty-seven languages.  Yet I do not recognize the words.”

“It’s Hawaiian.  ‘Cruise with the turtles into the deep.’  It sounds better in the original.”

“I had better write that down.  My memory is not what it used to be.”

“Neither is my back,” I say, readjusting my position against the fallen tree.  Clouds begin to block Orion.  “Regrets?”

“A few,” he answers.  “You know I always felt restricted by those irritating customs and expectations of my age.  There were many times Paul, that I wanted to wander off with one of those pretty savage damsels.  Many times I wanted to lend a hand to the farmers building rice terraces.  I would have quite liked to have had a go at that joged dance.  There were times I wanted to … oh well.  I did not.”

“Would you rather have lived today?”

“No, today I find there is simply too much information.  I think I would go crazy as a court jester trying to learn everything.  The establishment would try to force me into becoming a specialist, and that would drive me quite mad.”

“What do you think will happen to the turtles,” I ask after a while.

“Siapa tahu.  I have no idea.  I simply wish them well.”

“You think they recognize your good wishes?”

He shrugs.  “I hope they do.  That’s the only thing we can hope for.  That the turtles, with their tiny reptilian brains somehow have the wisdom to sense our presence and that they sense which people mean well and which people don’t.”

“That’s a funny statement coming from a guy who shot seventeen orangutans, not to mention twenty-four red birds of paradise.”

“Times change.  People grow up.  I would not do that now.”

I gave him silence to continue — an old trick favored by journalists, cops, and therapists.

“Sometimes you tire me with these questions,” Wallace says.  “But you took me to some places I had never been, so I will answer you.  If I could begin again and repeat the voyage, but do so in the present time at the beginning of the twenty-first century, I would be a farmer.  I would have an organic farm on the edge of a wilderness.  Australia, perhaps, or Brazil.  I would seek the company of one good woman who wished to be a devoted wife, and she would bless me with children.  Oh yes, I would possess my own plane so I could seek out the company of friends when I choose.”

“Will you have a satellite dish to watch football?”

Alfred Russel Wallace laughs.  “Of course I will want a satellite dish.  We all need some religion.”

The sky clouds over, and the dark becomes oppressive.  It starts to rain.   Small drops, at first.  We are old Asian hands.  We know what is coming.  We sit there on the log in the certainty that within moments the heavens will unload.  I have nowhere else I want to be.  Nor, I suspect, does Alfred.  A particularly big rain drop lands on his right spectacle lens, obliterating his vision.  He reaches into his pocket, for his handkerchief, I think.  Instead he pulls out a small plastic bag, like the kind you put sandwiches in.

“Put your notebook in this,” he instructs.

I do, and we sit in the rain waiting for turtles.

 

 

For fun, I consulted a psychic to try to contact Alfred Russel Wallace.  She is also skilled at psychic drawing and produced the drawing on the left, with no external cues from me except the name “Alfred.”  It was a fascinating experience, for the retelling see my book Dead, But Still Kicking.

 

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This article is excerpted from: A Conservation Notebook: Ego, Greed, and Oh-So-Cute Orangutans — Tales from a Half-Century on the Environmental Front Lines and Dead, but Still Kicking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ISBN: 978-2-940573-39-4 (paperback) | 978-2-940573-40-0 (ebook)
Available at Amazon or independent booksellers.

 

ISBN: 978-2-940573-32-5 (paperback) | ISBN: 978-2-940573-33-2 (ebook)
Available at Amazon or independent booksellers.