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TODAY
With Joy, always.

Love,
Libby
#thiscoldjoy
#coldexposure

EXPANSION:AGING
Starting something new at 60 wasn’t on my bingo card. Modeling of all things. But here we are, under bright lights, surrounded by familiar hums of cameras and crew. I’ve spent my career on set directing, shaping images, guiding others. Now I stand in front of the lens. It feels both strange and right. The same creative pulse, only from a new view. The work is no longer about control, it’s about trust and believing. Joy in the unexpected. Life keeps offering new chapters if you keep saying yes.

Why do it?
Because it matters to be seen. Representation shapes what we believe is possible. Too often, we erase women past a certain age, as if curiosity, style, and vitality fade with color in our hair. They don’t. I want my presence, my face, my lines, to quietly say, you are wonderful. I see you.

We deserve to see full lives reflected back. Wrinkles tell stories. Grey hair marks time lived. Visibility isn’t vanity, it’s truth. The more we show up, the more we expand what aging looks like.

Do what feels wonderful to you. This is what wonderful feels like to me.

Agency @wespeakmodels
Photo @kristinashakht
HMU @sarahhartistry
Styling @ezaks
Glasses vintage @gucci
Suit made from recycled men’s @house_of_tame
Shirt son’s hand me down

Three years ago, out of the blue, surprisingly, serendipitously, magically I started modeling.
Yep.
Modeling.
A word I still trip over and find hard to carry. But here I am, in front of the camera after a lifetime behind it. I didn’t know what I was doing at first. I was a beginner in a world I thought I understood. Turns out, learning something new, when you’re 60 plus, is wild and wonderful. I worked to stay open, listened to notes, laughed at my awkward arms, and showed up again and again. And somehow I’ve had the chance to work with photographers I once only dreamed of collaborating with as an art director. It’s been a little surreal and a lot of fun.

Why do I do it?
Two reasons.
First, I love being on set. Always have. It feels like home.
Second, I want more representation of those of us who are choosing to age naturally. I never saw people in the media who looked like me growing up. So now I show up. Silver hair, full wrinkles, age spots, big grin and all. I’m still learning how to do this. Still giggling. Still in awe. And truly, this chapter feels like a dream.

For @linguafrancanyc
Shirt hand me down from our son
Agency @wespeakmodels
Photo @nickthomsen
Glasses @caddis
#silverhair

IT’S SILVER BTW
“Don’t let yourself go”, he said
….“the gray hair, wrinkles, and all”…

Go where, exactly. Into my actual life? Into the version of myself that stopped apologizing for taking up space?

I have been getting the message my whole life, the one that says a woman’s value lives somewhere between her jawline and her hips, and it gets louder the older you get. Uglier, the cultural messaging. More persistent. Like it’s worried you might stop listening.

Here is what I know from the inside of this particular life: I feel more like myself right now than I ever have. More sure of what I think. More comfortable in the quiet. More willing to say no, and yes, and I don’t know, and that’s not for me. The alignment between who I am and how I move through the world has never been this clean or sparkly.

So what is this story we keep telling women about aging, and who does it serve?

It does not serve us. That much I know.

There is a whole generation of women walking around feeling more alive and more themselves than they ever did at 30, and the culture is handing them products and procedures and apologetic lighting, as if experience is something to be corrected.

I am not interested in correcting it.

I am interested in what happens when we stop letting other people define what “letting yourself go” even means. I have let myself go….fully into an expansive life.

#silverhair #classicmodel 🎉 #letyourselfgo
@wespeakmodels

Are you following 🩶
@thesilverlining_1970
@and.bloom
@luinluland
@welcometoheidi
@gilleanmcleod
@paulinaporizkov
@the.silvermermaid
@ageingdisgracefully_
@cathirae
@iconaccidental

ART:GAI
There is so much conversation right now about AI, and generative AI. GAI here, GAI there. Everywhere.

A machine can arrange the parts, but art was never only the arranging. It was the ache underneath. I don’t think a prompt is not the same as making. Typing a few words and waiting for something to appear is not the same as the prickly morning when you walk and walk and the idea finally finds you.

The artist lives in the making, not in the made thing. The art is the walking and the trying, the crossing out and the starting over. The finished piece is only what is left once all of that falls away. A machine hands you the shell and skips the only part that ever mattered.

A few untested thoughts.
🧵Making gives. It creates something that was not here before. It makes a future.
🫟 The machine does the opposite. It takes what other people already made and hands a version back to you. And every instant answer it gives runs on data centers that drink whole rivers and burn through power, warming the same planet we walk out into each morning.
🎨 Making begins in the body. In hunger and grief and that low quiet spark that says I have to do this or I will not rest.

There is a word I love for the kind of beauty I trust. Wabi sabi. The crack in the bowl. The mark of the hand. A machine can smooth a thing into a perfection that means nothing, because nothing was risked to make it. A slightly crooked line tells you someone was here. The wobble is the proof.

Use any tool you want. We always have. But .. AI is not really a tool. A tool waits in your hand for you to pick it up. AI acts. It is an agent, choosing what comes next on its own, and that is a very different thing to invite into the room. No machine has ever been afraid, or in love, or struck silent by joy and wonder.

And maybe that is the thing it misses most. It cannot feel the plain bravery it takes to make.

Would love your thoughts.
I am trying to learn.
Just read
- Empire AI by Karen Hao
- What Art Is Now: Creativity in the Age of AI by Michael E. Jones and Michael Caballes
- The New Creatives:How AI Changes the Face of the Creative Industry
#ai #art

ART:GAI
There is so much conversation right now about AI, and generative AI. GAI here, GAI there. Everywhere.

A machine can arrange the parts, but art was never only the arranging. It was the ache underneath. I don’t think a prompt is not the same as making. Typing a few words and waiting for something to appear is not the same as the prickly morning when you walk and walk and the idea finally finds you.

The artist lives in the making, not in the made thing. The art is the walking and the trying, the crossing out and the starting over. The finished piece is only what is left once all of that falls away. A machine hands you the shell and skips the only part that ever mattered.

A few untested thoughts.
🧵Making gives. It creates something that was not here before. It makes a future.
🫟 The machine does the opposite. It takes what other people already made and hands a version back to you. And every instant answer it gives runs on data centers that drink whole rivers and burn through power, warming the same planet we walk out into each morning.
🎨 Making begins in the body. In hunger and grief and that low quiet spark that says I have to do this or I will not rest.

There is a word I love for the kind of beauty I trust. Wabi sabi. The crack in the bowl. The mark of the hand. A machine can smooth a thing into a perfection that means nothing, because nothing was risked to make it. A slightly crooked line tells you someone was here. The wobble is the proof.

Use any tool you want. We always have. But .. AI is not really a tool. A tool waits in your hand for you to pick it up. AI acts. It is an agent, choosing what comes next on its own, and that is a very different thing to invite into the room. No machine has ever been afraid, or in love, or struck silent by joy and wonder.

And maybe that is the thing it misses most. It cannot feel the plain bravery it takes to make.

Would love your thoughts.
I am trying to learn.
Just read
- Empire AI by Karen Hao
- What Art Is Now: Creativity in the Age of AI by Michael E. Jones and Michael Caballes
- The New Creatives:How AI Changes the Face of the Creative Industry
#ai #art

ART:GAI
There is so much conversation right now about AI, and generative AI. GAI here, GAI there. Everywhere.

A machine can arrange the parts, but art was never only the arranging. It was the ache underneath. I don’t think a prompt is not the same as making. Typing a few words and waiting for something to appear is not the same as the prickly morning when you walk and walk and the idea finally finds you.

The artist lives in the making, not in the made thing. The art is the walking and the trying, the crossing out and the starting over. The finished piece is only what is left once all of that falls away. A machine hands you the shell and skips the only part that ever mattered.

A few untested thoughts.
🧵Making gives. It creates something that was not here before. It makes a future.
🫟 The machine does the opposite. It takes what other people already made and hands a version back to you. And every instant answer it gives runs on data centers that drink whole rivers and burn through power, warming the same planet we walk out into each morning.
🎨 Making begins in the body. In hunger and grief and that low quiet spark that says I have to do this or I will not rest.

There is a word I love for the kind of beauty I trust. Wabi sabi. The crack in the bowl. The mark of the hand. A machine can smooth a thing into a perfection that means nothing, because nothing was risked to make it. A slightly crooked line tells you someone was here. The wobble is the proof.

Use any tool you want. We always have. But .. AI is not really a tool. A tool waits in your hand for you to pick it up. AI acts. It is an agent, choosing what comes next on its own, and that is a very different thing to invite into the room. No machine has ever been afraid, or in love, or struck silent by joy and wonder.

And maybe that is the thing it misses most. It cannot feel the plain bravery it takes to make.

Would love your thoughts.
I am trying to learn.
Just read
- Empire AI by Karen Hao
- What Art Is Now: Creativity in the Age of AI by Michael E. Jones and Michael Caballes
- The New Creatives:How AI Changes the Face of the Creative Industry
#ai #art

ART:GAI
There is so much conversation right now about AI, and generative AI. GAI here, GAI there. Everywhere.

A machine can arrange the parts, but art was never only the arranging. It was the ache underneath. I don’t think a prompt is not the same as making. Typing a few words and waiting for something to appear is not the same as the prickly morning when you walk and walk and the idea finally finds you.

The artist lives in the making, not in the made thing. The art is the walking and the trying, the crossing out and the starting over. The finished piece is only what is left once all of that falls away. A machine hands you the shell and skips the only part that ever mattered.

A few untested thoughts.
🧵Making gives. It creates something that was not here before. It makes a future.
🫟 The machine does the opposite. It takes what other people already made and hands a version back to you. And every instant answer it gives runs on data centers that drink whole rivers and burn through power, warming the same planet we walk out into each morning.
🎨 Making begins in the body. In hunger and grief and that low quiet spark that says I have to do this or I will not rest.

There is a word I love for the kind of beauty I trust. Wabi sabi. The crack in the bowl. The mark of the hand. A machine can smooth a thing into a perfection that means nothing, because nothing was risked to make it. A slightly crooked line tells you someone was here. The wobble is the proof.

Use any tool you want. We always have. But .. AI is not really a tool. A tool waits in your hand for you to pick it up. AI acts. It is an agent, choosing what comes next on its own, and that is a very different thing to invite into the room. No machine has ever been afraid, or in love, or struck silent by joy and wonder.

And maybe that is the thing it misses most. It cannot feel the plain bravery it takes to make.

Would love your thoughts.
I am trying to learn.
Just read
- Empire AI by Karen Hao
- What Art Is Now: Creativity in the Age of AI by Michael E. Jones and Michael Caballes
- The New Creatives:How AI Changes the Face of the Creative Industry
#ai #art

ART:GAI
There is so much conversation right now about AI, and generative AI. GAI here, GAI there. Everywhere.

A machine can arrange the parts, but art was never only the arranging. It was the ache underneath. I don’t think a prompt is not the same as making. Typing a few words and waiting for something to appear is not the same as the prickly morning when you walk and walk and the idea finally finds you.

The artist lives in the making, not in the made thing. The art is the walking and the trying, the crossing out and the starting over. The finished piece is only what is left once all of that falls away. A machine hands you the shell and skips the only part that ever mattered.

A few untested thoughts.
🧵Making gives. It creates something that was not here before. It makes a future.
🫟 The machine does the opposite. It takes what other people already made and hands a version back to you. And every instant answer it gives runs on data centers that drink whole rivers and burn through power, warming the same planet we walk out into each morning.
🎨 Making begins in the body. In hunger and grief and that low quiet spark that says I have to do this or I will not rest.

There is a word I love for the kind of beauty I trust. Wabi sabi. The crack in the bowl. The mark of the hand. A machine can smooth a thing into a perfection that means nothing, because nothing was risked to make it. A slightly crooked line tells you someone was here. The wobble is the proof.

Use any tool you want. We always have. But .. AI is not really a tool. A tool waits in your hand for you to pick it up. AI acts. It is an agent, choosing what comes next on its own, and that is a very different thing to invite into the room. No machine has ever been afraid, or in love, or struck silent by joy and wonder.

And maybe that is the thing it misses most. It cannot feel the plain bravery it takes to make.

Would love your thoughts.
I am trying to learn.
Just read
- Empire AI by Karen Hao
- What Art Is Now: Creativity in the Age of AI by Michael E. Jones and Michael Caballes
- The New Creatives:How AI Changes the Face of the Creative Industry
#ai #art

ART:GAI
There is so much conversation right now about AI, and generative AI. GAI here, GAI there. Everywhere.

A machine can arrange the parts, but art was never only the arranging. It was the ache underneath. I don’t think a prompt is not the same as making. Typing a few words and waiting for something to appear is not the same as the prickly morning when you walk and walk and the idea finally finds you.

The artist lives in the making, not in the made thing. The art is the walking and the trying, the crossing out and the starting over. The finished piece is only what is left once all of that falls away. A machine hands you the shell and skips the only part that ever mattered.

A few untested thoughts.
🧵Making gives. It creates something that was not here before. It makes a future.
🫟 The machine does the opposite. It takes what other people already made and hands a version back to you. And every instant answer it gives runs on data centers that drink whole rivers and burn through power, warming the same planet we walk out into each morning.
🎨 Making begins in the body. In hunger and grief and that low quiet spark that says I have to do this or I will not rest.

There is a word I love for the kind of beauty I trust. Wabi sabi. The crack in the bowl. The mark of the hand. A machine can smooth a thing into a perfection that means nothing, because nothing was risked to make it. A slightly crooked line tells you someone was here. The wobble is the proof.

Use any tool you want. We always have. But .. AI is not really a tool. A tool waits in your hand for you to pick it up. AI acts. It is an agent, choosing what comes next on its own, and that is a very different thing to invite into the room. No machine has ever been afraid, or in love, or struck silent by joy and wonder.

And maybe that is the thing it misses most. It cannot feel the plain bravery it takes to make.

Would love your thoughts.
I am trying to learn.
Just read
- Empire AI by Karen Hao
- What Art Is Now: Creativity in the Age of AI by Michael E. Jones and Michael Caballes
- The New Creatives:How AI Changes the Face of the Creative Industry
#ai #art

TRAVEL:MAGIC
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.
- Terence McKenna.

🌎
Free range travel adventures with @modernfolk

.
The World is Both Burning + Blooming

You get the bad news
And the sunrise in the same day
You cry over the headlines
Then you laugh at a baby the same day
Wearing a hat shaped like a bear.

This is the dual citizenship
Of being alive.
Rage and reverence,
Grief and grace.
You are allowed to feel both.
You are allowed to scream,
And still notice how good the soup is.

You don’t have to choose.
Let it all in.

- Karen Salmansohn

PINE:SYRUP
Walked this morning and the pines have started again. New growth at the tips, soft and kind of glowing. Almost chartreuse-y. You can pinch the tip off to make a wild syrup. They taste a little like citrus, if citrus grew in the woods. 

What I do is simple. Grab a small handful of the soft new tips, only from trees you know haven’t been sprayed. Warm a cup of water with a cup of sugar until it clears. Toss the tips in and let it sit while it cools. Strain (lately I’ve been leaving the tips in), jar, fridge.

Go easy when you pick. Those little tips are the tree’s new branches for the year, so I never take much from any one of them. And learn your trees first.

I drizzle it into seltzer and add lots of ice cubes. 🧊

Safe and commonly foraged:
* White pine (Pinus strobus), a favorite around New England and gentle for beginners
* Spruce (most spruces, like Norway and red spruce), tangy and bright, maybe the most popular for syrup
* Douglas fir, citrusy and a little sweet, lovely
* Balsam fir, deeply piney and aromatic
* Hemlock the tree (Tsuga), which is perfectly safe and tastes wonderful. Just know it has nothing to do with poison hemlock the herb, which is a totally different and deadly plant

If you cannot positively identify the tree, do not eat it. There is no flavor worth the gamble.

Wild Mocktails all summer.

PINE:SYRUP
Walked this morning and the pines have started again. New growth at the tips, soft and kind of glowing. Almost chartreuse-y. You can pinch the tip off to make a wild syrup. They taste a little like citrus, if citrus grew in the woods. 

What I do is simple. Grab a small handful of the soft new tips, only from trees you know haven’t been sprayed. Warm a cup of water with a cup of sugar until it clears. Toss the tips in and let it sit while it cools. Strain (lately I’ve been leaving the tips in), jar, fridge.

Go easy when you pick. Those little tips are the tree’s new branches for the year, so I never take much from any one of them. And learn your trees first.

I drizzle it into seltzer and add lots of ice cubes. 🧊

Safe and commonly foraged:
* White pine (Pinus strobus), a favorite around New England and gentle for beginners
* Spruce (most spruces, like Norway and red spruce), tangy and bright, maybe the most popular for syrup
* Douglas fir, citrusy and a little sweet, lovely
* Balsam fir, deeply piney and aromatic
* Hemlock the tree (Tsuga), which is perfectly safe and tastes wonderful. Just know it has nothing to do with poison hemlock the herb, which is a totally different and deadly plant

If you cannot positively identify the tree, do not eat it. There is no flavor worth the gamble.

Wild Mocktails all summer.

RAIN: WALK
Walked in the rain this morning. It just started coming down soft and steady while I was lacing up my shoes, and instead of waiting it out I figured I would go. I am glad I did.

The thing that got me was the petals. There is a wild patch at the bend by the marsh, and every flower was holding these tiny drops, just sitting there on the edge of a petal, trembling a little, catching whatever gray light the morning had to give.

My shoulders got soaked through, and my hair stuck to my face. Glorious.

We try so hard to stay dry, all of us. We wait for the clearing, and we go out only when it feels easy. But there is something about the rain that I keep forgetting until I am standing back in the middle of it. It quiets everything down. It makes the green somehow louder. You can hear the natural world in a way you never can when the sun is out.

Go out when it is coming down, and find something small that is holding the water, a petal or a leaf or a single blade of grass, and just watch it for a minute.

To stand in the rain on purpose feels like the most elegant kind of surrender there is. Oh it is also a lovely reminder that we are in fact waterproof. @thismorningwalk #thismorningwalk

RAIN: WALK
Walked in the rain this morning. It just started coming down soft and steady while I was lacing up my shoes, and instead of waiting it out I figured I would go. I am glad I did.

The thing that got me was the petals. There is a wild patch at the bend by the marsh, and every flower was holding these tiny drops, just sitting there on the edge of a petal, trembling a little, catching whatever gray light the morning had to give.

My shoulders got soaked through, and my hair stuck to my face. Glorious.

We try so hard to stay dry, all of us. We wait for the clearing, and we go out only when it feels easy. But there is something about the rain that I keep forgetting until I am standing back in the middle of it. It quiets everything down. It makes the green somehow louder. You can hear the natural world in a way you never can when the sun is out.

Go out when it is coming down, and find something small that is holding the water, a petal or a leaf or a single blade of grass, and just watch it for a minute.

To stand in the rain on purpose feels like the most elegant kind of surrender there is. Oh it is also a lovely reminder that we are in fact waterproof. @thismorningwalk #thismorningwalk

RAIN: WALK
Walked in the rain this morning. It just started coming down soft and steady while I was lacing up my shoes, and instead of waiting it out I figured I would go. I am glad I did.

The thing that got me was the petals. There is a wild patch at the bend by the marsh, and every flower was holding these tiny drops, just sitting there on the edge of a petal, trembling a little, catching whatever gray light the morning had to give.

My shoulders got soaked through, and my hair stuck to my face. Glorious.

We try so hard to stay dry, all of us. We wait for the clearing, and we go out only when it feels easy. But there is something about the rain that I keep forgetting until I am standing back in the middle of it. It quiets everything down. It makes the green somehow louder. You can hear the natural world in a way you never can when the sun is out.

Go out when it is coming down, and find something small that is holding the water, a petal or a leaf or a single blade of grass, and just watch it for a minute.

To stand in the rain on purpose feels like the most elegant kind of surrender there is. Oh it is also a lovely reminder that we are in fact waterproof. @thismorningwalk #thismorningwalk

.
A big part of who I am
Is who I’m not anymore
- Unknown ;)

Change is happening all the time,
every day.

Photo @ceciliabilton
HNU @patricianeglam
Agency @wespeakmodels
Agent @cearah_peck
Hat @maisonkrasnova
Paris

#thisis64 #classicmodel #greyhair #silverhair

THE GIFT OF WONDER

We’ve grown up.

We no longer catch our breath at the sight of a rainbow or the scent of a rose as we once did.

We have grown bigger and everything else small, less impressive.

We get blasé and worldly wise and sophisticated.

We no longer run our fingers through water, shout at the stars or make faces at the moon.

- Brennan Manning, The gift of wonder.

#thiscoldjoy #sunrise #coldexposure

WORLD TURTLE DAY
I have loved leatherbacks for as long as I can remember. For a while I thought my life might go that direction. Maybe I would be a marine researcher?So one summer, when I was 16, I flew out to the islands and joined a research team, what we mostly did was walk the beaches at night. We kept watch for poachers. Waited for the mothers to come up out of the water, and when one did, we tagged her and took measurements while she dug her nest. 

What are they like up close? The biggest ones grow as large as a small car. A ton. They have looked about the same since the time of the dinosaurs, no hard shell, just a dark ridged back and skin like old leather, which is where the name comes from. When you get close to one you can feel how old the whole design is.

Leatherbacks travel an astonishing distance. Some swim ten thousand miles in a year between their nesting beach and the place they feed. They dive almost four thousand feet down, deeper than most whales go, and then they find their way back to the exact beach where they hatched. No one is quite sure how they do it. Or they weren’t sure when I was studying them. I think they use the Earth’s magnetic field. Time to do more research.

Sadly, they are endangered, and we are the cause. Their numbers have dropped about forty percent over three generations. In the West Pacific it is closer to eighty three percent. Most are lost to fishing nets or to poachers taking their eggs, and the Pacific leatherbacks are the closest to disappearing.

I am still that girl in a lot of ways, and I have not let the idea go. I might still become a leatherback researcher someday, older and grayer and happy to be walking the beach. 

There is no rule that says you cannot go back to the thing you loved before the world told you something else. Dreams don’t expire.

Today I am thinking about the leatherbacks. Old as the ocean. Maintaining jellyfish popluations. Still finding their way home.

#leatherbackseaturtle #worldturtleday 

Sources: NOAA Fisheries, the IUCN Red List, and The State of the World’s Sea Turtles.

WORLD TURTLE DAY
I have loved leatherbacks for as long as I can remember. For a while I thought my life might go that direction. Maybe I would be a marine researcher?So one summer, when I was 16, I flew out to the islands and joined a research team, what we mostly did was walk the beaches at night. We kept watch for poachers. Waited for the mothers to come up out of the water, and when one did, we tagged her and took measurements while she dug her nest. 

What are they like up close? The biggest ones grow as large as a small car. A ton. They have looked about the same since the time of the dinosaurs, no hard shell, just a dark ridged back and skin like old leather, which is where the name comes from. When you get close to one you can feel how old the whole design is.

Leatherbacks travel an astonishing distance. Some swim ten thousand miles in a year between their nesting beach and the place they feed. They dive almost four thousand feet down, deeper than most whales go, and then they find their way back to the exact beach where they hatched. No one is quite sure how they do it. Or they weren’t sure when I was studying them. I think they use the Earth’s magnetic field. Time to do more research.

Sadly, they are endangered, and we are the cause. Their numbers have dropped about forty percent over three generations. In the West Pacific it is closer to eighty three percent. Most are lost to fishing nets or to poachers taking their eggs, and the Pacific leatherbacks are the closest to disappearing.

I am still that girl in a lot of ways, and I have not let the idea go. I might still become a leatherback researcher someday, older and grayer and happy to be walking the beach. 

There is no rule that says you cannot go back to the thing you loved before the world told you something else. Dreams don’t expire.

Today I am thinking about the leatherbacks. Old as the ocean. Maintaining jellyfish popluations. Still finding their way home.

#leatherbackseaturtle #worldturtleday 

Sources: NOAA Fisheries, the IUCN Red List, and The State of the World’s Sea Turtles.

WORLD TURTLE DAY
I have loved leatherbacks for as long as I can remember. For a while I thought my life might go that direction. Maybe I would be a marine researcher?So one summer, when I was 16, I flew out to the islands and joined a research team, what we mostly did was walk the beaches at night. We kept watch for poachers. Waited for the mothers to come up out of the water, and when one did, we tagged her and took measurements while she dug her nest. 

What are they like up close? The biggest ones grow as large as a small car. A ton. They have looked about the same since the time of the dinosaurs, no hard shell, just a dark ridged back and skin like old leather, which is where the name comes from. When you get close to one you can feel how old the whole design is.

Leatherbacks travel an astonishing distance. Some swim ten thousand miles in a year between their nesting beach and the place they feed. They dive almost four thousand feet down, deeper than most whales go, and then they find their way back to the exact beach where they hatched. No one is quite sure how they do it. Or they weren’t sure when I was studying them. I think they use the Earth’s magnetic field. Time to do more research.

Sadly, they are endangered, and we are the cause. Their numbers have dropped about forty percent over three generations. In the West Pacific it is closer to eighty three percent. Most are lost to fishing nets or to poachers taking their eggs, and the Pacific leatherbacks are the closest to disappearing.

I am still that girl in a lot of ways, and I have not let the idea go. I might still become a leatherback researcher someday, older and grayer and happy to be walking the beach. 

There is no rule that says you cannot go back to the thing you loved before the world told you something else. Dreams don’t expire.

Today I am thinking about the leatherbacks. Old as the ocean. Maintaining jellyfish popluations. Still finding their way home.

#leatherbackseaturtle #worldturtleday 

Sources: NOAA Fisheries, the IUCN Red List, and The State of the World’s Sea Turtles.

WORLD TURTLE DAY
I have loved leatherbacks for as long as I can remember. For a while I thought my life might go that direction. Maybe I would be a marine researcher?So one summer, when I was 16, I flew out to the islands and joined a research team, what we mostly did was walk the beaches at night. We kept watch for poachers. Waited for the mothers to come up out of the water, and when one did, we tagged her and took measurements while she dug her nest. 

What are they like up close? The biggest ones grow as large as a small car. A ton. They have looked about the same since the time of the dinosaurs, no hard shell, just a dark ridged back and skin like old leather, which is where the name comes from. When you get close to one you can feel how old the whole design is.

Leatherbacks travel an astonishing distance. Some swim ten thousand miles in a year between their nesting beach and the place they feed. They dive almost four thousand feet down, deeper than most whales go, and then they find their way back to the exact beach where they hatched. No one is quite sure how they do it. Or they weren’t sure when I was studying them. I think they use the Earth’s magnetic field. Time to do more research.

Sadly, they are endangered, and we are the cause. Their numbers have dropped about forty percent over three generations. In the West Pacific it is closer to eighty three percent. Most are lost to fishing nets or to poachers taking their eggs, and the Pacific leatherbacks are the closest to disappearing.

I am still that girl in a lot of ways, and I have not let the idea go. I might still become a leatherback researcher someday, older and grayer and happy to be walking the beach. 

There is no rule that says you cannot go back to the thing you loved before the world told you something else. Dreams don’t expire.

Today I am thinking about the leatherbacks. Old as the ocean. Maintaining jellyfish popluations. Still finding their way home.

#leatherbackseaturtle #worldturtleday 

Sources: NOAA Fisheries, the IUCN Red List, and The State of the World’s Sea Turtles.

WORLD TURTLE DAY
I have loved leatherbacks for as long as I can remember. For a while I thought my life might go that direction. Maybe I would be a marine researcher?So one summer, when I was 16, I flew out to the islands and joined a research team, what we mostly did was walk the beaches at night. We kept watch for poachers. Waited for the mothers to come up out of the water, and when one did, we tagged her and took measurements while she dug her nest. 

What are they like up close? The biggest ones grow as large as a small car. A ton. They have looked about the same since the time of the dinosaurs, no hard shell, just a dark ridged back and skin like old leather, which is where the name comes from. When you get close to one you can feel how old the whole design is.

Leatherbacks travel an astonishing distance. Some swim ten thousand miles in a year between their nesting beach and the place they feed. They dive almost four thousand feet down, deeper than most whales go, and then they find their way back to the exact beach where they hatched. No one is quite sure how they do it. Or they weren’t sure when I was studying them. I think they use the Earth’s magnetic field. Time to do more research.

Sadly, they are endangered, and we are the cause. Their numbers have dropped about forty percent over three generations. In the West Pacific it is closer to eighty three percent. Most are lost to fishing nets or to poachers taking their eggs, and the Pacific leatherbacks are the closest to disappearing.

I am still that girl in a lot of ways, and I have not let the idea go. I might still become a leatherback researcher someday, older and grayer and happy to be walking the beach. 

There is no rule that says you cannot go back to the thing you loved before the world told you something else. Dreams don’t expire.

Today I am thinking about the leatherbacks. Old as the ocean. Maintaining jellyfish popluations. Still finding their way home.

#leatherbackseaturtle #worldturtleday 

Sources: NOAA Fisheries, the IUCN Red List, and The State of the World’s Sea Turtles.

WORLD TURTLE DAY
I have loved leatherbacks for as long as I can remember. For a while I thought my life might go that direction. Maybe I would be a marine researcher?So one summer, when I was 16, I flew out to the islands and joined a research team, what we mostly did was walk the beaches at night. We kept watch for poachers. Waited for the mothers to come up out of the water, and when one did, we tagged her and took measurements while she dug her nest. 

What are they like up close? The biggest ones grow as large as a small car. A ton. They have looked about the same since the time of the dinosaurs, no hard shell, just a dark ridged back and skin like old leather, which is where the name comes from. When you get close to one you can feel how old the whole design is.

Leatherbacks travel an astonishing distance. Some swim ten thousand miles in a year between their nesting beach and the place they feed. They dive almost four thousand feet down, deeper than most whales go, and then they find their way back to the exact beach where they hatched. No one is quite sure how they do it. Or they weren’t sure when I was studying them. I think they use the Earth’s magnetic field. Time to do more research.

Sadly, they are endangered, and we are the cause. Their numbers have dropped about forty percent over three generations. In the West Pacific it is closer to eighty three percent. Most are lost to fishing nets or to poachers taking their eggs, and the Pacific leatherbacks are the closest to disappearing.

I am still that girl in a lot of ways, and I have not let the idea go. I might still become a leatherback researcher someday, older and grayer and happy to be walking the beach. 

There is no rule that says you cannot go back to the thing you loved before the world told you something else. Dreams don’t expire.

Today I am thinking about the leatherbacks. Old as the ocean. Maintaining jellyfish popluations. Still finding their way home.

#leatherbackseaturtle #worldturtleday 

Sources: NOAA Fisheries, the IUCN Red List, and The State of the World’s Sea Turtles.