Alligator Woman

Womanhood.  No one warns you of its surprises, its hardships, its nuisances.  No one tells you that there will be bad days, days where you feel the urge to sing James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World” loudly… and spitefully.  No one prepares you for that day in the workplace when you are made to feel smaller.  Similarly, no one prepares you for the good days, the days you celebrate being a woman.  The days in the office, where people want to listen to you and gain insight from you perspective.  The days you love wearing that hot red dress.  All of us as women benefit from knowing other women and men in our life, who help us grow and help us find strength in the very gifts that make us who we are.  I have grown with the help of many wonderful women in my life.  I have women, who have helped me develop my adventurous self -- with whom I have chased windmills in the Spanish countryside and with whom I have climbed canyons.  I have women, who have helped heal my broken heart – who have held me when the tears of heartbreak have made waterfalls of my face.  I have women, who have helped me find a truer version of myself, who have helped me find God in a desert and truth in philosophical conversations on a Georgia back porch.  I have women, who have helped me realize strength I never knew I had, women, who have loved me through my failures and have helped me love myself a little more.  To all the women in my life, who have helped me more graciously embrace womanhood.  Thank you.  You are my rocks, my sunshine, and my strength.  I love you.

Although I have “binders of women” in my life, and although I could write an entire book about stories with all of them… I write this essay about one woman in my past.  Ultimately, however, I hope that this essay serves as a tribute to all the lovely women, who have helped me along my path.

I met the Alligator Woman at a research station in South Georgia, where I worked as a summer research assistant.  The research station was set far back in the woods, situated on a longleaf pine preserve. The longleaf pine forests, which once covered the expanse of the Southeast U.S., are now relegated to small preserves and state parks, and this special research station in South Georgia is one of its most magnificent strongholds - longleaf pine stands for miles, broken up only by the occasional wetland or the Flint River to its East.  The nearest town with a grocery store was Colquitt 20 miles away. And the nearest coffee shop was in Albany was 40 miles away.  This place was the essence of “country” living and your best chance at entertainment was making friends with the people in your closest proximity.  Luckily, the research station was also hub of graduate students and scientists, ready-made friends within close reach.  I was assigned to live in a house with the Alligator Woman and, let’s call her, the Fox Woman.  The Armadillo Man and the Coyote Man lived next door.  We had frequent visits that summer from the Rattlesnake Woman and the Frog Woman.  I lived in a house of many lovely badass women, and I felt like the luckiest girl alive.  

My main duty that summer was to help maintain some plots on site at the research station that were planted in longleaf pine forest flora.  However, I also floated around to other labs helping with tasks where needed.  I did field work with the wetland lab, the wildlife biology lab, as well as the herpetology lab.  Everyday was an adventure, and I was thrilled to be working with so many brilliant minds.  I went out armadillo tracking at night, helped set alligator traps, was an observer of a rattlesnake tracker implant surgery, and waded through wetlands collecting microbial data.

Of all my many adventures, however, there was one I will remember most.  It involved a canoe ride down the Flint River with the Alligator Woman.

The trip was part research, part relaxation.  We needed to check a few alligator traps, but it was also a beautiful Saturday for a leisurely canoe ride.  At the time I had not yet helped the Alligator Woman with her research in the field.  So I was mildly alarmed when we approached one of her traps on the river.  The trap included a large mass of hanging raw meat dangling just feet from the shore’s surface.  I felt a strange mix of emotions.  For when we rounded the bend and neared the meat trap, it seemed as though the very meat itself was afire with butterflies.  A mass of swallowtail butterflies had almost entirely covered the meat and the ground beneath it.  Later I discovered such a phenomenon was not abnormal.  Often insects, including Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), will gather around carrion, as well as mud puddles and other areas, that are nutrient rich with sodium and amino acids.  Butterflies, in particular, can use these supplemental nutrients for sustenance and reproduction.  How amazing I thought, as I stared at the large mass of rotting carrion with a thousand wings, how something that otherwise would evoke a sense of fear and dread can also somehow be beautiful.  This lesson of nature’s double-faced reality was one of many I would learn from the Alligator Woman that summer.  Not many weeks after the canoe ride I was out checking traps with the Alligator Woman when we came upon a surprise.  Off in the distance we spotted a rather large alligator, possibly the “Mother of all Alligators” known at the research station.  This was the legend, the 10-ft alligator that lurked in the shadows of your worst nightmares.  I watched as the Alligator Woman observed wistfully through her binoculars.  Later she told me a story about a recent day she had in the field.  She was in a wetland alone setting a trap, and although she never sighted the alligator, she was fairly confident one of the larger alligators was in the wetland with her… watching.  I cringed and made some kind of corny joke that masked my nervousness.  She quickly turned to me with a look of seriousness on her face.  For the Alligator Woman being in the presence of these creatures conjured emotions that bordered the line of fear and awe, death and life.  For the Alligator Woman these moments were possibly spiritual, a rare chance to be one with nature.  I never made a corny joke on the matter ever again.

After checking traps on the river that day, we commenced our leisurely canoe ride down the Flint River.  The sun was warm, the breeze just right, and the water our open road.  Our small cooler held a few PBR’s, some orange cream soda, and a couple of sandwiches, the appropriate fuel for a day canoe ride.  Nothing spectacular happened that day.  No 10-ft alligators surfaced, no surprises welcomed us from the river.  Even the fish were lazy.  I suppose the thing that made that canoe ride so special was learning about womanhood from the perspective of a woman, who I greatly admired – a woman who embodied all that had ever been badass and cool.  The Alligator Woman told me tales of her adventures, her love stories, her triumphs and failures.  She told me about what it was to be a woman and a scientist.  She explained to me that there were many paths to womanhood, and I could choose whichever path I wanted.  She also told me that I could take pride in being a woman.  I had nothing for which to be ashamed.  For much of my life I secretly envied men.  At 19, it seemed men had more leisure to focus on their careers and do great things.  I also envied men, because they were not burdened by pesky lady hormones that played tricks on their emotions.  However, the Alligator Woman told me there was wisdom to be learned from my emotions, strength to be gained from my experiences, and hope to be gathered from my dreams.  Being a life-full woman was not for the weak hearted.  After the canoe ride that day womanhood became something to be both feared and revered.  Somehow in that moment, all the Alligator Woman’s talk about being in a wetland alone with a 10ft alligator made sense.  I was both utterly petrified and thrilled about the path of womanhood ahead of me. 

I often go back to that day on the Flint River in my mind when I feel weak and tired.  On days when I feel like the woman victim, or on days I feel as if the plight of lady emotions is just too much to bare, I remember the Alligator Woman.  I remember that the road to womanhood is long but it can be an adventure.  I remember that this path is not easy, but I am strong.  Years later another woman mentor told me that I should always go into interviews and presentations with “boobs out.”  Okay, not literally boobs out.  She meant that I should stand tall and embrace my womanhood despite both the earth’s gravity and my own self-doubt.  And so as I write these last lines, on one of those weak and tired days, I tell myself:

“Boobs out, Sarah.  That’s what the Alligator Woman would do.”