So me, the folks, and K are doing the loch walkaround.  We’re coming into the final lap through the square before the final uphill closure.  We pass a large piece of dirt that looks like a dried dog-doo, surrounded by tinier pieces.  I stop to take a closer look, because I sense something powerful about it.  In the space of a few seconds I believe I see a turtle shell covered by dried dirt.

I call the clan to hold up, and crouch down to get a closer look.  They think I’m picking up a dog-dropper and have gone nuts.  I pick up the little creature and get a closer look, the camouflage at last seen through—it’s a baby snapping turtle.  I recognize the long, slender, whip-like tail and curved claws.  The strong, snub beak that snaps shut like a steel trap.

The bulbous eyes blink as it shrinks into tight shell immobility.  Still alive!  How on earth it got all the way over here I don’t know, but we decide to carry it back down the path to the loch side.  I place the turtle on a flat rock half out of the water, surrounded by plants, safe to enter the water when ready.  I’ve seen huge snapping turtles in the shallows of the loch, and once in the road in the morning, so I know they exist.

This little one must have erupted from an egg in the dirt and gotten lost on that left turn in albuquerque.  Well, may the turtle find delicious morsels and grow to enormous size in the grand waters of the loch!  I’m going to bust out in song here, watch me work now:

Gamera is really neat,
He is full of turtle meat,
We all love you Gam-e-ra!

In the movie The Bermuda Depths, it’s the hatching of the baby giant monster sea turtle that creates the bond between the young Magnus and the ghostly Jennie.  There’s a familiar struggling in that story, I think, of lost souls for understanding of a love beyond mortal and immortal ability.  We create things through caring which descend into the deep and resonate with a mystery.

Some might search for the hard truth of that mystery, and get exactly that—with a locker courtesy of Davy Jones (another name for the Devil).  Others wander in and out of the mystery, finally walking away with a reluctance to face the vulnerable reflection that is revealed.  Meanwhile, clues attach themselves to minor actors we only get a few walk on scenes to notice and contemplate.  Lucky is the person who can rewind and reflect upon a slight turn of the light!

The star-crossed lovers never reach the unspoken dream.  Magnus returns Jennie’s talisman to the sea—which to me says he rightly sacrifices his old life.  Jennie keeps her promise and returns to the depths.  Given the misfortune she has spread by returning to see Magnus, this is a mercy for us on the surface.  Yet, carved in the shell of a mutual connection are their initials within a heart.

Is it a monster this mixed partnership creates, or is it perhaps we as the audience wish only to see the horror of the inconceivable?  There is an individual crumb in there that speaks again of the hybrid, if we as audience would only pull the sword from the stone of our own mind.