The Soul of a Tortoise
Four years in the making… and now it looks like a book. I’m proud to announce the cover of Tortoise! Journeys with the World’s Most Fascinating Reptile.
I fell in love with this stunning image of an Aldabra giant tortoise the first moment I saw it.
A proud tortoise fills nearly the entire frame. It carries itself high on four legs and walks with purpose as if marching straight toward the viewer. Its eyes reflect the sky and the clouds. Its nose is dusted with white sand where it probably stopped to take a bite of something that washed in on the tide. Far in the distance, white-crested waves crash on the almond-colored beach. Bits of detritus litter the sand. The only visible footprints belong to the tortoise; none by humans.
On Aldabra, a tortoise on a beach is an everyday occurrence. They frequently wade into the saltwater here, overlaying their footprints on those of the green turtles who had come ashore overnight to nest. It’s one of the few places on earth — maybe the only place — where giant tortoises and sea turtles might cross paths.
This wonderful image was captured by Dennis Hansen, with the Natural History Museum of the University of Zurich. I reached out to him very early on in my tortoise quest because he had several seasons of field experience on Aldabra Atoll. Remote, inaccessible, and protected, Aldabra struck me as a place I ought to write about, and even visit — although it was an impossible dream. I had a ton of questions.
Hansen spent several hours regaling me with stories from Aldabra, describing its giant tortoises in glorious detail as he walked me through a slide show of his photos. One of his images stopped me cold: a head-on shot of a giant tortoise striding across Settlement Beach, near the atoll’s research station. Suddenly, I saw tortoises as not just fascinating and endearing, but also charismatic and even heroic. Hansen’s photo was everything I could have dreamed of for a cover image.
Hansen’s urging, and my immediate connection with the photo, cemented my desire to reach Aldabra. Eventually I succeeded. With less than two weeks’ notice, I headed for the Seychelles Islands to spend a month on Aldabra over Christmas and New Year’s with a small group of staff. I spent hours walking the beach. I met many tortoises, hoping that one of them might have been this individual. But I’ll never be sure. The month on Aldabra was one of several extraordinary adventures that shaped the narrative of Tortoise! It became the book’s final chapter.
My heartfelt thanks to the creative team at W. W. Norton & Company, who used this image as the basis for a powerful cover design.