The chicken wire cages lining the Florida beaches stood like silent sentinels guarding the nests of a threatened species, the sea turtle. Each nest was dated so the rangers would know when the hatchlings would emerge to make their way to the ocean. Decades later, the survivors would return to the beach of their birth to lay their own eggs. In between time, they would never set foot on land.

Since the first time we saw cages in Venice, Florida, and found out what they meant, we dreamed of seeing a sea turtle during her brief stay on land. We discovered several places that offered free sea turtles watches. The closest ones to us were on the east coast of Florida, so we signed up for one near Titusville. The size of the group is limited so getting a reservations is not easy. Our first attempt was not successful since you cannot predict where and when they will arrive. We scheduled a second trip, this time near New Smyrna Beach.

We went to the north end of the Canaveral National Seashore, just south of New Smyrna Beach, for the "official" sea turtle watch. At 8 pm the ranger had a slide show and program to teach us how to behave if we were in the vicinity of a sea turtle. The twenty people in our group came from all over the country. We all cheered when the ranger's cell phone rang at 9:30 pm and it was a scout calling to say she spotted a loggerhead turtle down the beach who had just started digging her nest. She told us to hurry because this turtle was really going at it and wouldn't be there long.

The ranger led us in our cars, caravan-style, to the closest beach ramp. From there it was a quarter-mile hike in pitch blackness due to the new moon. Only the two rangers were allowed to carry flashlights and they were fitted with red filters that would not disturb the sea turtles.

When we got there, the sea turtle had just finished laying her eggs and was methodically covering her nest, patting it over and over again with her back flippers for about twenty minutes. Then she took her front flippers and tossed sand over the top which covered her, too, and a few people in our party that got too close. We were told to stand behind her, out of her line ofvision. Although she seemed huge to us, we were told that she was relatively small.

It was such a sacred moment to see. There was this gentle reptile, weighingaround two-hundred pounds, who had presumably returned to the exact place ofher birth at least 20 years later to lay her eggs, continuing a miraculous cycle started eons ago.

The ranger said we could gently touch her back if we wanted to. We all did! It was a moment to remember. We also got to accompany her down to the ocean and watched her swim away. Several of the children called after her, "Goodbye. Have a nice life."

Then we were surprised to see the ranger digging around the nest site to find the exact location of the eggs in order to put a raccoon-proof chicken wire barrier over it. The sea turtle had covered her nest so well that it was hard to see exactly where the middle of it was in order to protect it from predators.

Finally, the ranger dug down about two feet and opened the nest. She reached in and carefully removed the top egg from the nest. We were really shocked and thought it would never hatch if she touched it and then put it back. We were wrong.

Then something we never expected happened. She passed the egg around for each of us to hold! There was total silence as each of us had our own internal experience as we held this precious egg from a threatened species in our hands. It looked like a rubbery, wet ping pong ball. We were really movedby the experience as you can imagine. The ranger assured us it would not harm the egg in any way to do this and she put in back in the nest and spent lots of time packing the sand and smoothing it out as the sea turtle had done before.

Finally the ranger said the nest needed an identifying name besides the reference number they gave it. People shouted our their ideas. My husband, Gordon, suggested "Speedy" and it was the unanimous winner, as this turtle layed her eggs in record time! As we left, another loggerhead was slowly crawling in from the ocean to make her nest on the same beach where she was born. We stop to let her pass and stood there silently as she looked for the perfect spot to lay her eggs. We thought we might get to watch the whole process, but the federal rules only allow one sighting a night per party. They believe even one is an intrusion, but understand the importance of educating the public about endangered and threatened species. It was a wonderful moonless night under a bright starry sky. We will never forget it.