Labor Day called for an impromptu trip to the beach. I had never been to any Delaware beaches before today, and to be totally honest I’m not a huge beach goer. I’ve always loved the beach, but I don’t come from the kind of family that packs beach chairs and coolers for a day of sweating and sand. My parents can never stand to be in one place for too long.
Today I found myself on one of Lewes’s beaches, about an hour and a half from the University of Delaware. My friend knew of a spot where there wouldn’t be many people. The beach was eerily quiet, for it being a holiday and all. I quickly gathered that my friends are the kind of people that can stand to be in one place for too long.
It is almost sacrilege to tell college students that you’re not big into naps. So as my five friends fell unconscious around me, I tuned in to who else was on the beach. Seagulls seem to fly in pairs. Gliding in rings around each other far above sea level. Every now and then, a solo gull would glide low to the ground along the shore in search of fallen Cheetos. He knew the drill; people won’t eat a sandy Cheeto.
Seagulls weren’t the only ones to traffic the sky, which looked like Andy’s room in Toy Story today. Clouds in perfect form, the way you draw them around important words in your notes when you’re feeling fancy. I watched a massive hawk make its way across the beach. Unlike the seagulls who had to flap their porcelain wings every once in a while to keep them going, this hawk kept his amber basketball player arms extended all the way down the beach. With just the slightest turn of his head he controlled his route. I was thinking about if these birds ever flew for fun, or if they always have a purpose or a destination to be flying.
I honed in on the sound of the waves. The shore is never still nor quiet. What a wild thought that that ebb and flow has been around as long as the ocean itself. Someone else who has been around for what looks like forever, the horseshoe crab. ‘Living fossils’ we call them, but I’ve never seen a living horseshoe crab. They always seem to be dead, and Lewes looked like a murder scene for horseshoe crabs today. It’s shocking to see these prehistoric critters in the modern world. Horseshoe crabs look like they should exist in history books about the cretaceous period and that’s about it. They must not be coping well with the anthropocene as so many of them are washed up and dried out on the sand instead of in the water.
Woken from her sunny slumber, one of my friends gets my attention. A foot away from her head is a palm-sized crab, whose black beady eyes looking at my friend are communicating: ‘you’re in my way.’ That’s when I noticed that the beach is punched full of holes, about the size of golf balls. The crab scuttled back and forth a little, rushed and nervous. When she’d stand still, her front claws would be moving a mile a minute, looking as if she were devouring her favorite meal. If any of us humans were to move, she’d flee down one of her rabbit holes, which made me think about crab culture. Is this a free for all system? Do all the crabs share holes or are there property laws in place? I couldn’t help but imagine some for of ant farm dynamic here with a whole underground city.
Today, I watched with the intent of wondering. I’ve always loved animals, but today was the first time in a while that I’ve really tapped back into that fascination. It was refreshing and I am thrilled to do it again.