The Turtle Speaks at Low Tide by Bonner McAllester

“Low tide in October,
Is anybody sober?”

Every school child will recognize this familiar saying, passed along to us humans by our older brothers and sisters of the animal world. Native Americans refer to humans as the youngest members of the extended family because all those other species came before us. They have been on earth longer than us and could teach us a lot, especially with their quaint sayings.

The “Low tide…” saying comes to us straight from our local Monterey Painted Turtle relatives. Neither they nor we live in a watershed that is affected by the natural sea tides. We do know about these, but not in our daily lives. What are the Painted Turtles carping about? And what is this reference to inebriation?

We pull the plug on Lake Garfield causing October low tide every year. Why do this? There are so many reasons, it’s hard to know where to start. One powerful reason is that, well, we just always do do this. Why on earth stop now? It’s normal around here are we are used to it. Who knows what would happen if we, gulp, changed something?

Another reason is that we can do it for free. So why not? Just walk up to the gate in mid-October, unlock the handle and crank away. Done in time for coffee break.

But what do we gain? Ah—there’s public safety. Our lake drops a few feet and then if we should get a major snowmelt or rainfall we don’t have to worry about all that water roaring down the Konkapot causing deaths and injuries downstream. No floods in the floodplain, no dangerous rescue missions. We’ll be safe, from those things at least.

Also, we don’t have to worry about ice forming around our various lakeshore structures, stressing and straining them with the pressures of freezing and thawing. Of course, we get our boats out anyway, and mostly we haul out the docks and swimming floats as well. Still, you can’t be too careful about big chunks of ice. Remember the Titanic?

Then there are the pernicious pondweeds, threatening to kill our lake with their alive-ness. Them we want to discourage totally with freezing and drying and whatever else we can throw at them. They are not welcome in our lake, mainly because they are yucky and interfere with our recreational and aesthetic happiness here. Plants—who needs them? Not boaters and swimmers, that’s for sure.

I have laid out the case for the annual October drawdown or low tide. It’s only fair now to welcome the voice of the Painted Turtle. Please explain that “Anybody sober?” clause to our scientists, Older Brother.

Turtle: Thanks for having me on your show! First, we should apologize about the word “sober.” English is not our first language, and our poets were just looking for a rhyme with “October,” we think. Still, here’s the point.

Here in the Monterey Land and Lake Community we have a fine universe, or university, or school of life. From the microbes to the moose we have animal and plant populations living together in a particular balanced harmony that both reflects and defines this bioregion, our shared home. Now and then something big and surprising comes along: a heat wave, a drought, a tornado, floods. We survive these things. Little oaks sprout in the spring and little Painted Turtles come up out of the ground, too, later in summer. We head for the lake and glide among the pondweeds, nibbling at small plants and animals. When we get bigger we’ll even go after fish and frogs. We bask on grass clumps in the swamp, sun ourselves on stumps and fallen logs. When the days get shorter and chillier, we head down into the mud for our winter sleep, along with many other members of the community.

Then under some crazy influence, our younger family members drop the lake level on us. Most of us freeze to death, the ultimate long winter sleep. Some survive by luck, the ones who waited until the end of the drawdown before heading into the mud, the ones who stayed active just a couple of weeks longer.

The dead? They just rot away down there in the mud, compost for the next crop of microbes and milfoil. Nobody cries and nothing goes to waste in this community. But we did put out that little jingle about draw-down and sobriety because even though turtles don’t fret about messing with nature and the continuation of life on earth, you-all do. And the place to look at Environmental Management from its motives to its murderous manifestations is, you know, right at home.



Thank you, Painted Turtle, the voice from the mudflats at low tide in October. We hope to see you in the spring, hope you’ll still be on our show.



Bonner J. McAllester

This essay about drawdown originally appeared in the November 2010 issue of The Monterey News.