FAMILY : ‘Old Turtle’ Gets a Musical Treatment

“Old Turtle,” a gentle tale about reverence and respect for earth and all its creatures, including humankind, has taken on a life beyond the printed page since its launch three years ago by a small Minnesota publishing company.

Written by Minnesota naturalist, wilderness guide and singer-musician Douglas Wood, and illustrated by noted watercolor artist Cheng-Khee Chee, the book has reaped many honors, including the 1993 American Booksellers Book of the Year. It has also spawned a just-released audiotape of Wood reading the story and singing his original songs, as well as a separate book, “A Million Visions of Peace, Wisdom From the Friends of Old Turtle,” gathered from children through a 1994 nationwide “Old Turtle Peace Tour.”

“The book has been out in national distribution for about 3 years,” Wood said. “Up to half a million copies have been sold, and other translations are going overseas now. My publisher, Pfeifer-Hamilton, has been growing along with it. When they decided to do an audiotape, I was pretty excited.

“I’ve been a songwriter much longer than I’ve been a book writer, and I composed the music to enhance the mood of the reading and to extend the messages.”

In Wood’s eloquent parable for adults and children, the creatures of the earth argue over their visions of a Creator, until Old Turtle solves the debate with wise words of harmony and understanding. Wood’s spinoff songs include “Did You Ever Hear a Turtle’s Voice?” and “Make a World to Make Old Turtle Smile.”

“ ‘Turtle’s Voice,’ ” Wood said, “is about the idea that some of the things that are most important in the world are hard to see and hear and do. ‘Make a World to Make Old Turtle Smile’ ” is based on “one of everybody’s favorite parts of the book. It’s about how someday maybe we’ll make a better world Old Turtle can smile in. Every day the world is being made anew, a flower stretching out to the soil, a tree is making oxygen, homes for birds, shade for us. Every creature and every being in the world is helping to make the world.

“The important thing for us to remember is that human beings help to make the world more beautiful or more ugly and that’s our choice.”

Wood said the book is not a religious story “but I would definitely call it a spiritual book. It’s not promoting or presenting any particular religious viewpoint. We use the word God but we could have used [other words] that refer to the same great concept or idea. The important thing is that we need to use the word gently and with respect and reverence for one another’s differences.”

The idea, he said, “is to come to the point where we can see beauty and truth, or God, which may be the same thing, in one another and in the natural world we live in.”

For Wood, the environmental movement “has always been [a] spiritual movement. It’s a spiritual idea to think that frogs and toads are important, that trees are important and can teach you about living on the planet. These are themes that recur in all my writing, my songs and stories.”

Wood, who has served as wilderness guide for such groups as the National Audubon Society and the Smithsonian Institute, has since written four other books, including “Paddle Whispers,” a “meditative, metaphorical story where a canoe trip becomes the story of the journey each of us makes through life.”

* “Old Turtle,” Pfeifer-Hamilton Publishers, book, $17.95; audio, $11.95. (800) 247-6789.