"The ability to connect emotionally with what stands before you is the active ingredient of wonder."

Here I am in the Sea of Japan--a one time swim accompanied by a lot of stuff like dead fish.

L to R: April 2023, named First Climate Resilience Hero by Massachusetts chapter of American Red Cross.

Off to NYC to join Explorers Club.

Peter inChatham.

Pulling the blue toilet out of a pond as member and founder of the Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage.

The original dive with two other swimmers in 2018.

Pulling a dead snapping turtle out of the water.

Swimming!

Thus as I advanced into my seventies, I unintentionally embarked upon a divided life. On land, my desire for the mastery of facts and figures that was supposed to guarantee me an unbreakable bond with turtles energized one project after another. I always had an agenda. Underwater, I didn’t. There, my desire for the fascination that distracted me from the losses of aging led me to float through a shifting world with neither plan nor control. My assumption was that the more projects I undertook and the more expertise I gained, the easier it would be to find a permanent place in the wonder-world of turtles. Not realizing I had it backwards, I doubled down on becoming a turtle expert as if bricks could be used to build a rainbow.