The 1.4-Mile Journey to the Sanctuary
Sometimes the most interesting stories arrive when you aren't looking for them.
One day, we had a rather unusual visitor show up at the sanctuary.
A very large tortoise.
No owner. No explanation. He had simply appeared.
Of course, a tortoise this size doesn't exactly blend into the scenery, and it was obvious that he belonged to someone. He was much too accustomed to people to be wild, and somewhere I imagined there had to be a very worried person wondering where their enormous wandering pet had gone.
So I took his picture and put it on Facebook, hoping someone might recognize him.
Then we waited.
By the end of the day, the mystery was solved.
His very relieved owner saw the post and came to reunite with him. That was when we learned just how incredible his little adventure had actually been.
This big guy had traveled approximately 1.4 miles from home.
That might not sound very far until you remember we're talking about a tortoise.
And this wasn't an easy 1.4 miles.
He had made his way through heavily wooded terrain, traveled through a prison fire camp, and somehow navigated all the way down a long, steep road before finally arriving at the sanctuary.
I couldn't help but wonder what that journey must have looked like from his perspective.
Where did he think he was going?
Was he simply exploring?
And with all the different directions he could have taken, how did he end up here?
For a few hours, he rested safely while a photograph traveled much faster than he ever could. That photograph found its way through Facebook to the person who was looking for him.
By the end of the day, our mysterious traveler had a name, a home, and a very relieved owner there to take him back.
I love photographs for this reason.
Sometimes we take a picture because something catches our eye. But when we stop long enough to look a little deeper, we discover that the photograph isn't really the story at all.
It's simply the doorway into one.
And this time, that doorway led to the story of one determined tortoise, a 1.4-mile adventure, a worried owner, and a very happy reunion.
Of all the places he could have wandered that day, somehow he ended up at a sanctuary.
Maybe even a tortoise knows where to go when he needs a safe place to rest.
