Stoney Point Nature Reserve, Betty's Bay, South Africa 1988

Re-accessing my old slides and negatives continues to ignited an entire review of moments in my past life. 

How could I have known just how this moment in my life would return to me decades later?

This is the place that my friend Russ and I ended up at on a drive where we spoke truth to one another.

We'd never been deceptive.  I don't want to suggest that.  But the heart is a willy critter.  It is more than capable of concealing things in order to get its way.  

We didn't open a map and say, let's go to Betty's Bay.  We just got into his little white Opal sedan and headed south and then east on route 44.  I don't recall what it was about the exit to Betty's Bay and the Stoney Point Nature Reserve that caught our fancy, but that were we turned off the highway. 

We found a parking lot mostly empty. I remember how fresh the air felt.  A sign cautioned visitors to not approach any of the Penguins.  Penguins?  That was not something I had any expectation of encountering.

After exploring at a respectable distance the beach and African Jackass Penguin colony, we had our heart-to-heart.

I know at the time I was both totally expecting what Russ was going to tell me, and utterly devastated, too.  I just didn't have a back-up plan and that was pure foolishness on my part given the anticipated outcome of our conversation.

It is a testament to his integrity and lesson to the power that a slammed door--even one shut with compassion--can have in the process of becoming an adult.  It was a lesson that I would need to learn all over again in time, but it was also a milestone in my own journey toward personhood.  

Cormorants atop the rocks

African Jackass Penguins (Spheniscus demersus) in a colony at Stoney Point Nature Reserve, 1988

And then from 2018 to 2025 I ended up volunteering as a docent at the Maryland Zoo, home to the largest colony of African Jackass Penguins in North America.  Our lives are webs.