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Turtle Haven

Turtle Haven paintings by Teagan White

Selective Sanctuary  |  12" x 16"  |  gouache and watercolor on paper

Swell  |  8" x 15"  |  gouache and watercolor on paper

Settle  |  9" x 15"  |  gouache and watercolor on paper

turtle haven

301 gallery
hood river, or
August 2024


For 301 Gallery’s group show INSPIRED, a collaboration with Friends of the Columbia Gorge, who gave participating artists access to lands they steward in Oregon and Washington along the Columbia River Gorge to inspire their work for the show. My pieces were based on Turtle Haven, a 65-acre preserve that protects habitat of the endangered western pond turtle.

a cluster of turtles rest in the shade of yellow pond lilies. duckweed stipples the dark water, holds the dappled shadows of alder leaves. our trail is a bent stem of bracken, a faint dimple in the grass to suggest someone pushed through once before. a turtle climbs a rotting log to bask in the sun at the top. my movement spooks a bullfrog, who leaps in the air with a shriek that spooks me back, before settling in the shallows to regard me with suspicion. thousands of her relatives were culled to make this haven for the western pond turtle, the article proudly states. a secret habitat on an unmarked road, once a homestead, given back to the reptiles before their population could dwindle to nothing. hatchlings are reared at the zoo and released here to live their long lives in safety. the round eye of the frog bores into me. at school luna learns to kill them on sight, pulls up handfuls of shiny geranium. i close my eyes and i am a turtle hatchling, swimming willingly into the great mouth of the frog. i know there is little enough left for me, and life must go on. i open my eyes and i am human in the shadow of towers and machines that swallow the land. i do not know when to trust and when to fight. i rip back dark mats of ivy, coax delicate vancouveria from the soil. the fraught earth senses our deficiencies, pushes edible weeds up along pavement; this was all once a wild food forest, and is determined to be one again. the new world of species unfurling in our wake is less beautiful and complex than what came before, but so are our minds and hearts. science makes rules for who lives and dies, but nature has no interest in all that. large disc-like tadpoles skate through the sun-warmed river where i come to cool my feet, and i am happy to see them. what do we become when we name death a victory? the otter dances below the surface, slick fur flashing in the hot sun as it breaks duckweed into swirls of color. i am glad it was not raised in a zoo, then unsure whether this is one or not. i have visited the waterfall zoo, the pitcher plant zoo, the ancient tree zoo, the camas zoo. places where you may look but not touch, witness but not participate, pass through but not stay. clusters of lemon balm brush my ankles; alanna is sad to see it here, but last night at the campsite i made tea from bags that i bought at the store. it seems like the land gives us all we need, and we say no no, not that way. the bullfrog sits as still as a stone. when a storm or a fire or a clearcut scars the forest, native blackberry from the seedbank fills in the space for decades like a scab until the canopy heals over. my gaze softens as miles of invasive blackberry flash past on the highway. this may all be part of the plan. the madia i sowed has taken over my yard and driveway, gone from weed to pollinator-friendly back to weed again. i resist the urge to curate, to impose order. seven turtles have disappeared in the blink of an eye, without leaving behind so much as a ripple. i step back, relax into the pattern, and watch as life unfolds.