The Slowing Season

Author Mary Laura Philpott learns the importance of downtime from a turtle who roams and rests in her Tennessee backyard.

-  Mary Laura Philpott

Frank, an Eastern box turtle, lives in my family's backyard. While he is pet-like in that we have named him (I don't know what his turtle-mama named him, probably not Frank), he is not a pet. He is wild.

When he's not gracing us with a passing appearance on the back patio, Frank wanders the weedy, rambling hills of our bucolic Nashville-area home, taking care of himself. As winter approaches, his natural instincts tell him to preserve energy; so, he nestles under a layer of dirt and leaves for a long stretch of inactivity. This seasonal rest-called brumation, kind of like hibernation for cold-blooded animals-lasts from roughly late October to April.