The sea spits out life as the sun rolls over, and the sea swallows it again when the sun returns in the morning. This is how it always has been and always will be until all the being is done. So I walk at night when the beach feels most empty. When I pause, I see the truth: it is teeming. And this is how I happened upon the lone sea turtle come to lay her eggs.

She was a leatherback and looked close to a thousand pounds. I guessed she was in her eighties, but if I didn’t know better, I might have thought she was the very beast holding all of space and time on her back.

She saw me too. Regarded me for a strong second and then continued to dig. We both understood I was uninterested in stealing her eggs. And so the minutes passed, her digging and me watching, her digging, digging, digging and me watching. Until at last, the hole that would hold her future offspring for the next two months was sunk sufficiently deep into the earth.

My own sweat sank into the sand beneath me, a sacrifice or blessing.

We sat apart but together in silence as she laid more than one hundred eggs. It was a colossal effort that took almost no time. Then, I watched as all the sand she’d previously excavated, she now pushed back over the nest. Sisyphean was my first, unkind thought. Mother was my second, and it became an exhale.

The whole event was over in an hour and a half, but the old leatherback did not make it back to the sea. She knew she would not, for after backfilling her nest, she met my stare again. We both understood why I was waiting here at the jungle’s edge.