First of all, let me make one thing clear, I know the difference between a turtle and a tortoise. It just so happens, though, that the people who inhabited this valley many decades ago didn't, or at least they didn't care about the distinction. I don't know if that makes them ignorant, but that doesn't really matter, and, quite frankly, it's completely irrelevant. What I call a turtle in this story is really, in actuallity, a tortoise. So keep this in mind if such distinctions are important to you.
Let me make it clear that I'm not talking about an ordinary turtle, or tortoise. What I'm talking about is a black turtle with pigmentation in its skin and shell that make it an extremely dark gray color, almost black. It's like a living, crawling shadow, only this is a shadow that no one ever sees. The black turtle exists only in the most remote part of the desert, where very few people ever go, near the town where I live. I thought it was just a local legend, a myth or fictional invention of some story-teller's imagination, until my friends and I saw one with our own eyes.
We didn't actually intend to go looking for this turtle as the name of this story implies, or at least, that wasn't our main purpose for riding out to the location where we wound up finding them. Instead we were out hunting for new and exciting places to ride our motor bikes. I have a quad and my friends all have quads except for one boy, named James, who has a three-wheeler. Anyways, we found the black turtles while riding around in a very remote corner of the desert on a cool Sunday, early in November last year.
I got to my friend Patrick's house at about nine that morning. James, and my other friend, Sawyer, were already there. They were all playing video games and so we hung out for a little while. I had a cup of hot cocoa and I remember Patrick's uncle coming out and telling us something about the largest of the mines in the valley. It was called the Black Turtle Mine and one of Patrick's uncle's relatives actually owned the mine a long time ago when it was still active. Patrick lives with his uncle now. His mother sent him to live in our little town in the middle of no where with his uncle because he got into too much trouble where he used to come from.
It was while I was drinking my cocoa that Patrick's uncle said something about the legendary black turtles that supposedly inhabited the local desert.
"That couldn't possibly be true!" said Sawyer. Sawyer was the best student of all my friends. He always got good grades and he hardly ever got in trouble. He messed around some at school, but he didn't do the kinds of things that stupid kids do that get them in trouble.
"Whether it's a myth or not, I can't say for sure since I've never actually seen them for myself," said Patrick's uncle.
"But you hike all over the place and if there were any living around here then you'd have to have seen them at one time or another," said James.
Sawyer and me were in the sixth grade and James and Patrick were in the fifth grade. Patrick and James were known to get into a lot of trouble at school. They didn't do dim-witted things like pass notes or shoot spit wads, they were way too clever and bold for that, but an account of their scholastic exploits is not part of this story.
"Yeah, you'd have seen them if there were any around here," I said.
"I have explored this valley rather thoroughly, but it could be that they just didn't happen to be out when I visited their neighborhood," said Patrick's uncle. By the way, Patrick's uncle was the science teacher at school and he didn't use the term tortoise either, when talking about the black turtle. He used a lot of black turtle stuff to decorate his house. A lot of people in town were really into Black Turtle Art.
After Patrick's uncle told us a little more about the black turtle and the myths and legends told by the old time miners and the local Native Americans, Patrick asked, "Well, if there really is a black turtle, then where do you think he'd live?"
"Somewhere where not very many people visit," said Sawyer.
"You mean like the top of Black Turtle Peak?" asked James. The peak by that name was the highest in the valley, at a little over seven thousand feet in altitude.
"No, I'd put my money on the west fork of the valley, up by Razorback Dunes," said Patrick's uncle.
"Oh, yeah, we've been there before and we saw turtles, but I can't remember if they were black or not," said Sawyer. He was referring to himself and James and Patrick. They had been there before, but not me.
It was at this time that I finished my hot cocoa and we decided that we would ride out to Razorback Dunes. We all checked our gas tanks before starting our quads.
"I need more gas," said James.
"Me too," said Patrick. He ran into his garage, grabbed his gas container, and shook it. "I'm all out. I'll go run in and get some money from my uncle."
Before Patrick could do as he said, Sawyer said, "No. Let's just go up to my house." Sawyer always had plenty of gasoline stored at his house.
We rode up to Sawyer's house and his little brother, Kolby, came running out when he heard us approach the house. Kolby liked filling up the gas tanks and so we let him put the gas in for us. He needed a little help, though, since the container was full. Kolby was in second grade and he was small and skinny, like a little Sawyer, and so he couldn't handle the weight of five gallons of gas. While we were filling up, Sawyer's dad came out to see what we were doing. We told him that we were going up to Razorback Dunes. He said he wished he could come with us, but that he was too busy. He told us to be careful before he went back into the house.
Once we had our tanks all gassed up, we headed up the west fork of the valley. The first few miles was on a dirt road that regular four wheel drive vehicles could handle. The dirt road got rougher and rougher the further up the valley we went and after a while it became too narrow for a passenger vehicle like a truck or a jeep. It also got a lot rougher. There were large rocks we had to creep over and lots of sand and deep rutted-out sections that made the riding really slow. Not only did the trail get narrow, but the whole valley got really skinny too. There was a narrow section that went on for a long ways and then all of a sudden the valley opened back up and after a bit we saw the dunes up ahead of us.
We took a trail that went up past the dunes. It was on the left side of the dunes (that would be the south side) on the firm slope of the valley just above the dunes. The trail here was wide enough for a jeep or a truck and so at one time there must have been a road that came all the way up the valley. At the end of the road we reached the top of the valley and there was an old shack there. The dunes started right below the shack and the top of the valley. Sawyer called the top of the valley the saddle, whatever that means. Anyways, the dunes were over a mile long and there was a really steep drop off on the north side.
"It's like a cliff made of sand," I said as I gazed at the dunes from where we parked our quads by the shack.
"Yeah, Doug, that's why they're called Razorback Dunes," said Patrick.
The other guys had been to the shack before and they showed me the skeleton of a donkey that was by the shack.
"See how it's right in front of that hitching post?" asked Sawyer.
"Yeah, we think it was tied to the post and it died of starvation because it couldn't get loose," said James.
I looked for signs of a rope or something that it could have been tied up with, but there was not even the slightest hint of a rope of any kind.
"We think that it's owner was shot or had an accident or a heart attack or something like that," said Patrick.
"But it could have just been a coincidence that it died there," added Sawyer.
"I guess it was a long time ago," I said as I looked at the sun-bleached bones. Beside the bones there was other junk like rusty cans and bed springs laying on the ground around the shack.
We went into the shack for a little and looked around. Everything was either rusty or broken inside the shack and there wasn't any doubt that the shack was infested with rats. I pulled open a drawer by what had been the sink and found a few old papers in a tin can. We looked through the papers and found notes and little maps scribbled on them. There were also a few pictures of turtles on some of the papers. It looked like some miner had been stuck in the shack in the middle of nowhere and had nothing better to do than to doodle on scraps of paper.
When we got out of the shack, I said, "Should we ride down the dune?"
"We thought about that last time, but it looks too dangerous," said Patrick. If Patrick thought it was too dangerous then it probably was because he was the kind of kid who was a natural born dare-devil.
"Yeah and so last time we just went back down the road," said Sawyer.
We walked out on the dunes about forty yards where the dunes reached their highest point and then without saying anything Patrick jumped off the steep side of the dunes as he said, "Geronimo!"
James, Sawyer, and I laughed as we saw Patrick rolling down the steep sandy slope and a second later James did exactly what Patrick had done. He yelled, "Geronimo!" and was about thirty feet below us in a second. By this time Patrick was over one hundred and twenty feet below us and still rolling. It was obvious that Patrick was enjoying his fall and so Sawyer and I looked at each other and both jumped at the same time. "Geronimo!" we both said simultaneously.
By the time we had stopped rolling and falling and tumbling down the side of the dunes we were over three hundred feet below where we had jumped off from.
"You know the only problem with what we just did is that now we have to get back up there just to get to our quads," said Patrick.
"Don't forget about my three-wheeler," said James.
"Do you guys know how hard this is going to be?" asked Patrick looking up in the direction of the shack, which we could not see from where we had landed.
We laid there for a while and after a little bit Sawyer said, "You know I have sand in my pockets and in my shoes and in my hair."
I started emptying my pockets and for a moment I felt kind of panicky. "Crud! Where are my keys?" I said as I padded my pockets.
The other guys all hastily located their keys. I strained the sand through my fingers as I emptied out my pockets and was relieved when I felt my key get trapped between my fingers.
"That would have been a major pain," I said.
"Tell me about it. We'd have had to leave you out here to die like that donkey," said Patrick.
"Very funny," I said.
At first we tried to climb up the same way we had fallen, but soon realized that climbing up an extremely steep sand dune was next to impossible. So we hiked about fifty yards to the west and climbed up the steep and rough slope just beyond the dune. It was an exhausting climb and I just about collapsed when I made it back up to the saddle.
"Who was the idiot who had the idea of jumping off the dunes?" I asked as I lay on the ground recovering from the climb.
Sawyer and James were both laying on the ground like me.
James said, "It wasn't my idea."
"Mine neither," said Sawyer.
"No one said that you had to jump just because I did," said Patrick with a big smile. He was hardly even tired at all from the climb. Then he added, "You guys are just a bunch of wimps!" Patrick was just as skinny as the rest of us, but he was really strong although you couldn't tell from just looking at him. He could kill any of us at basketball or pull ups or the mile run.
"If I wasn't so tired, I'd make you eat those words," said James.
It had taken us almost two hours to ride up to the shack and it was one heck of a rough ride. Between that and the climb back up from the bottom of the dunes, I was feeling kind of beat up, sore, and tired by the time we started riding back down the road. We stopped at the bottom of the dunes and decided to walk a little ways up the base of the dunes.
It was at this time we saw standing before us three black turtles.
"This is just where we saw them last time," said Sawyer.
"Only I didn't really realize they were black," said Patrick.
"I didn't really know what color they were supposed to be," said Sawyer.
"Weren't there more last time?" asked James.
We walked up to them to get a closer look.
"Don't get too close, they get scared by people," said Patrick.
"Hey, their eyes are green," I said.
"Yeah, you're right," said James.
"Your uncle should be here," said Sawyer to Patrick.
"Yeah, he'd take a bunch of pictures of them for sure," said Patrick.
"I wish we had a camera," I said.
We sat there for about fifteen minutes and watched the turtles walk slowly through the sand. They left interesting foot prints. There were prints from their paws and skid marks where their shells and tails slid across the sand. We kept our distance, but followed them until they disappeared in their dens. We knew we had witnessed something special as we walked back to our quads.
"Those eyes are kind of evil-looking," said Patrick.
"I think they look neat," said Sawyer.
"They're evil," said Patrick as he squinted his eyes and tried to give Sawyer an evil look.
"No, you're evil Patrick," said James.
"Yeah, so? You're all rested now, so are you ready for your beating?" asked Patrick to James referring to the challenge he had made back up by the shack.
"Sure. I can take you anytime!" said James.
James and Patrick wrestled in the sand until James was too out of breath to wrestle any more. It started out as a pretty good match for the first forty seconds or so, but James got too tired after that. Patrick never seemed to get tired.
"Do either of you two sissies want some of this?" asked Patrick.
Sawyer and I both rushed Patrick at the same time and working together we were able to get him pinned. When James saw that we had Patrick pinned he jumped up and said, "You're totally helpless now!" He ran toward us. Sawyer and I released Patrick. James jumped and Patrick rolled out of the way just barely in time. James landed in the sand and Patrick laughed and said, "Too fast for you, huh?"
James said, "If those two dorks had kept ahold of you I would have smashed you."
"Too bad for you," said Patrick.
James moaned a couple of times and then sat up.
We were all totally exhausted by the time we got back to town. We went to Patrick's house first and told his uncle about the turtles who muttered something about how he thought they'd be hibernating by this time. He knew all about the dunes and so it was easy to explain where we had seen the turtles. We were going to sit down on the couch and play video games, but Patrick's uncle could tell that we were all sandy and made us go outside. He said he didn't want to have to vacuum up a lot of sand, but he let us have a snack and something to drink out on the patio. We told him some more about the turtles. When we told him that the turtles had green eyes, he said that he'd really like to get some pictures of them.
"What did I tell you?" said Patrick.
We laughed and Sawyer said, "We knew you'd want to take some pictures of them."
"Are you going to write an article?" asked Patrick.
"I don't know. We wouldn't want a bunch of people riding up there and disturbing them, now would we?" asked Patrick's uncle.
We all agreed that we didn't want tons of people invading the desert near our town.
"Are they a new kind of turtle?" asked James.
"Probably. If not a new species, at least a new sub-species," said Patrick's uncle. Then Patrick's uncle explained that it was important to call them tortoises when talking about them scientifically. He said that in everyday life the distinction between turtle and tortoise wasn't really all that important, but when you were having a scientific discussion that sort of thing mattered.
"Why?" asked James.
"Well, when it comes to legends, literature and myths and that sort of thing, we don't have to use exact language since we're not necessarily dealing with facts. But when it comes to science, precision and clarity are important and that's when it is worth worrying about," explained Patrick's uncle.
"So, it's not ignorant to call a turtle a tortoise or a tortoise a turtle?" I asked.
"Not necessarily," said Patrick's uncle.
"It just depends," said Sawyer.
"Yeah, it just depends on the context in which you use those words. Sometimes precision is a virtue and sometimes it's just something that nit-pickers worry about and there's not many things more annoying than people who worry about things that are inconsequential," said Patrick's uncle.
"Yeah, I know some people like that," said James.
"Me too," said Patrick.
"So call them black turtles if you like and let the small-minded, picky people worry about whether it's a frog or a toad or if a tomato is really a fruit or a vegetable," said Patrick's uncle.
"Or if its a turtle or a tortoise," I said.