Hopes of a Turtle Lady

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What can we hope for in our lives? To love and be loved. To do good things. To care about the universe. To think about creatures other than ourselves. To find a passion. To have hope.


I have the infinite honor today to bring you the incomparable Mary Alice Monroe. Her biography is below, and please read that. Her books are below--including her newest New York Times bestseller--and please read them.

But read this first.

Hopes of a Turtle Lady

Mary Alice Monroe


I am a Turtle Lady.



From May to October, I join other turtle team volunteers to search the beaches for turtle tracks. I've been permitted by the South Carolina Department of Resources for twenty one years, which means I am one of the few allowed to locate the turtle eggs and mark the nest with bright orange signs declaring the nest is protected under Federal law, to move the nest to a safe location when necessary, to monitor the emergence of hatchlings and afterward inventory the nest for hatched and unhatched eggs and release trapped hatchlings to the sea--usually to the oohs and ahhs of the waiting crowd.



I began this adventure when my sister telephoned from Florida to tell me how a sea turtle crawled up the beach outside her home and began laying eggs. Marguerite is an artist and she described in colorful terms how the turtle cried great tears as she laid her eggs. Immediately metaphors danced in my head and I volunteered on the Island Turtle Team.

The first time I saw a female lay her eggs was a night I'll never forget. We never know when or where a turtle might come ashore so seeing one is a matter of luck and God's grace. In high school I went to a strict Catholic boarding school where the nuns had us dressed and ready for mass in no time flat, so when I get a call in the wee hours that a sea turtle is spotted, I'm fast. When I arrived at the beach, the loggerhead had just begun her trek toward the dunes. Breathless and wide-eyed, I hunkered down on the cool sand beside my teammates. We are always careful not to disturb a sea turtle with noise or lights for, if we do, she'll turn around and head back to the sea without laying her eggs.

It was one of those miraculous nights when the tide was low and the full moon lit up the pristine beach like an amphitheater. To watch a loggerhead's cumbersome crawl up the beach is to sit in awe of her courage and strength of purpose. She is slow and steady, contending with the effects of gravity on her 350 pound carapace as she makes her way to the dunes. After a long silence, the scraping sound began again as the sea turtle used her rear flippers to dig a nest, a process that would take at least an hour to reach twenty inches down.


Turtles are less likely to be startled from their task at this point, so we moved like ninjas in the dark for a better view. We sat behind a clump of sea oats and watched as, one by one, the turtle dropped over one hundred leathery eggs.


While she labored, I saw the thick streams of tears flow from her beautiful almond eyes. Science explains those tears as a natural cleansing of the eyes, but as a writer...as a woman...I saw them as a mother's tears. The tears of duty, love, and commitment. The tears of resignations and acceptance. I wept with her, thinking of my own children, knowing that all young are poised for leaving and that no mother can protect her children from their fate. We were just two mothers, having a good cry together.

Perhaps that maternal instinct is why so many women volunteer to protect the sea turtles.


When finished, we watched in silence as the mother turtle covered and camouflaged her eggs. She then began the long crawl back to the sea, never to return to the nest. This is when we take over watch.

Each year as the season progresses and hatchlings start to emerge, we sit by nests like midwives. When the hatchlings at last boil out from the sand some 45-60 days later, we guide them to the sea as their turtle mother cannot. We call them babies, much to the chagrin of biologists, but that's what they are to us.


Tiny, vulnerable, three- inch babies that follow their instinct and crawl in a comical frenzy toward the brightest light. In nature, that bright light comes from the moon and stars over the ocean. In modern times, the brightest lights are usually from electricity and lead the hatchlings away from the sea toward certain death.



This is why we post signs “Lights Out for Turtles” and watch nests at night so we can guide the hatchlings home. We sit under the stars swapping bottles of bug repellent and stories. These women are not only my teammates, they're my friends. Like women have done for thousands of years, we gather together for a purpose—and we are stronger for it.


When I watch the tender three-inch hatchlings disappear into the sea, it's always a tender, introspective moment. I worry if any of them will survive the perilous journey to the vast sargassum floats in the Gulf Stream. I wonder if even one will survive thirty years to maturity and return to our beach to lay another generation of sea turtles. Only one in a thousand is likely to.


Yet I have hope.


This summer I will begin my twenty second summer as a sea turtle volunteer. I never would have guessed when I first became a volunteer that this charismatic animal would change my life and my career.


At the end of a season, when the last hatchling makes it to the ocean, I stand shoulder to shoulder with my friends on the turtle team staring out at the sea. None of us speak. We are all lost in our own thoughts as we bid farewell to another season, to the mother turtles and the thousands of hatchlings somewhere out in the Gulf Stream.


My hope is that one of those hatchlings will make it back to the Isle of Palms or Sullivan's Island. And that I'll still be standing here on this patch of beach, waiting to welcome her home.



HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Usually, this is the place where we say something thoughtful or funny, or ask a question. So, okay. A question. This made me cry. How about you?

And let me say: Mary Alice's newest novel, THE SUMMER OF LOST AND FOUND --now a New YorkTimes bestseller--is gorgeous women's fiction, as her books always are. But it also has...turtles.

And her upcoming THE ISLANDERS does too--maybe you know a

kid who'd adore it?







Mary Alice Monroe is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including the Beach House series: The Beach House, Beach House Memories, Swimming Lessons, Beach House for Rent, and Beach House Reunion. 

She is a 2018 Inductee into the South Carolina Academy of Authors’ Hall of Fame, and her books have received numerous awards, including the 2008 South Carolina Center for the Book Award for Writing, the 2014 South Carolina Award for Literary Excellence, the 2015 SW Florida Author of Distinction Award, the RT Lifetime Achievement Award, the International Book Award for Green Fiction, and the 2017 Southern Book Prize for Fiction. 

Her bestselling novel The Beach House is also a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. She is the cocreator and cohost of the weekly web show and podcast Friends & Fiction. An active conservationist, she lives in the lowcountry of South Carolina.



Author Website: www.maryalicemonroe.com

Friends and Fiction: http://friendsandfiction.com/ (show and podcast)

Long bio: https://maryalicemonroe.com/meet-mary-alice/