The Cure for Insomniacs

St. Peter's Eagle Boys youth group; Nevis field trip and turtle night walk




I can't quite put a finger on what exactly caused the complete wipe out of consciousness on the beach come Friday morning at 1 am, but I knew it had something to do with the summation of 2 days of young boys and all that entails. Never before have I been so thoroughly exhausted, mentally and physically. I mean sure, there have been those times where my body has had enough, but that was always after some strenuous physical exertion, like running a marathon or swimming the St. Kitts-Nevis channel. I just couldn't quite understand what it was with those boys that created the same zombie-like state, minus the leg ache, after my 26 mile run in the rain in Napa. Could it have been the cramped, sweaty bus ride around Nevis the day before? Or the constant state of alertness once they all scrambled out of the bus and scattered? Or maybe the moment I saw the crab carcasses next to their shattered shells near the rock wall and many more live ones in the hands of their juvenile captors (oh yes, I saw red at that point!)? Maybe it was all the beach walking come Thursday night and having to constantly reassure and entertain the boys that we would see a leatherback turtle. Heck, maybe I myself got tired just by watching them have turtle nest digging competitions and refereeing on who had dug the best hole. Or maybe it was not just one singular event that wiped me out, maybe it was just a culmination of the full island Nevis tour on Wednesday and the turtle walk the next day but all I know is that by the time those boys left the beach late Thursday night, I did one more walk along the beach to look for nesting leatherbacks and once we stopped to break I was out cold on the sand. By the time I got home at 4:30 am it was all I could do to shower and drag my useless self to bed.