Nothing changes if nothing changes.

This is so logical and obvious but yet we often get we stuck in our situations and wonder why things aren’t any different.

We look at the challenges and mountains ahead and don’t even try.  We classify things as too hard, difficult or complicated and leave it at that.  It is easier to accept crap than try to change it.

I am in between homes (a long story) and am spending a month or so at an incredibly beautiful apartment right on the beach.  I wake up and look at the ocean.  Awed by its beauty, I look to the sky and thank the universe that through all the troubles that life has thrown at me recently … I have come out reasonably unscathed with two feet on the ground and an exciting road ahead.  And yet I let myself be bogged down by details and errands, by issues and pennies. I wonder why I’m not moving forward yet I am not taking a single step.

So this morning as the boys left for school, I put on my bathing suit and told the world to go do whatever it has to do, but I was going to the beach for one hour.

“My” beach

As soon as my feet hit the sand, I began to think about the myriad of details I had to take care of and plan how I would get them all done.  I had to tell myself to stop thinking.  I would look at the ocean, and wet my feet in the transparent water imagining some sort of magical cleanse only to continue walking and be lost in my to do list about two minutes later.

I toggled between peace and panic the whole two miles out and into the Bill Baggs State Park.  On my way back, I saw a park ranger and I knew what she was doing.  At this time of the year, on this beach, the Loggerhead turtle comes to lay eggs.  Along the miles of beach you see these protected areas and signs.

How about that shadow?

The Loggerhead are a threatened species.  The females reproduce every 4 years or so and nest an average of four times that year.  She lays 100 – 120 eggs in each of these nests yet only one in one thousand hatchlings live to adulthood. That is why the park as well as the Village of Key Biscayne go to great lengths to protect these turtle nests.  You can read more about the efforts here.

I looked down and saw these tracks, something I had never seen before and I was giddy with excitement.

The bottom track is where the turtle came up the beach, the track on top was her return to the water.

I spoke to the ranger for a minute as she explained how she knew it was a Loggerhead and how she was going to put a screen on top of the eggs to protect them from raccoons.  As I thanked her for the information and for her hard work, she thanked me for my interest and thanked the woman who was with her: a volunteer for the park.

Bill Baggs State Park ranger and volunteer hard at work.

I was all smiles about seeing the loggerhead track and began looking at the sand to see what else I found.  I came across crab holes, and even saw a few of the crabs running into them.  I also saw loads of trash, left over from the beachgoers who enjoyed a beautiful Miami beach Sunday yesterday.

I juxtaposed the plastic bottles on the sand with the marked turtle nest.  What a shame, those bottles would end up in the ocean and hurt these same turtles.  So I picked up the plastic bottles and threw them in the trashcan which was literally twenty feet away. I continued picking up bottles the entire way back.  I left a diaper though (yuck).

The purpose of this post is not to give myself a pat on the back for picking up trash although I must say I felt so much better when I finished my walk.

If you read closely, all this happened on my way BACK.  That means, that on my way there I walked right past these same plastic bottles and it didn’t register that I should pick them up.

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

I can either go through life stuck in my never ending to do list and worried about the issues that I face, or I can look at the world around me and do my part to make it a little bit better. If no one picks up the trash, the trash will stay there.

I can make the change. I’ll take the latter.