CLASSIC: Turtles Studies by David Carroll Video: Interview with
David Carroll Yankee Class from June 1993 In the April
afternoon, the sun sinks low, coloring the wide oval expanse of
the marsh. David Carroll tugs his waders to the tops of his
thighs and strides into the place he calls the Route of a
Thousand Spotted Turtles. He moves silently through the tea-
tinted water. The bog is numbingly cold and grows deeper as he
pushes farther into this vast sweep of nature near his home in
Warner, New Hampshire. It is the beginning of his year with the
turtles. Carroll is here, as he is every day once the ice is off
the marsh, in search of the dozens of different turtles he has
acquainted himself with over the past eight years, including “13
April,” “Male Beautiful,” and “Ariadne,” a spotted turtle he
favors shamelessly. He has observed these turtles — painted
turtles, box turtles, Blanding’s turtles, snapping turtles, wood
turtles, musk turtles — emerging from their winter slumbers; he
has measured them and marked t