As much as I loved escaping from my day job and everyday
life to beautiful Cancun for a week long amazing vacation I am also totally thrilled to
be back home in DC again. Not just getting back to my son whom I’d missed but really
for all of it-back to my job, summer weather in a fab city, inspirational friends everywhere,
my iPhone data usage back on track, Facebook and all this stuff that was still in
place just as I left it...and of course I'm not taking any of this for granted!
As exhausted as I felt the first week, I managed to get all
the unpacking and laundry done on schedule with time to spare even. So
lo-and-behold it was time for new adventures. First I went on a ten plus miles
hike in Shenandoah with some of my beautiful friends whom I hadn’t seen since
winter…giving me everything my soul craves-nature, exercise as well as a chance to catch up with friends. Fun parts of the first hike included butterfly watching in SNP forest and making some more awesome new
friends along the way. Then the following weekend got even more exciting…as
I did something new…lending towards learning and discovering new fantastic
facts about this phenomenal planet we belong in…and this time it was all about
horseshoe crabs! Yup! We went to check out the annual horse-shoe crabs spawning on
Slaughter Beach in Delaware on a Saturday night.
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| Mystical forest in Delaware…2+ hrs drive only! |
Did you know that horseshoe crabs as a species haven’t evolved in 500 million
years and precede dinosaurs? Or that they congregate once a year on the beaches of Delaware (...and apparently some other islands in the Far East..) for spawning
under a truly splendid full moon on a gorgeous summer night with high tides?....Or that the high tides totally work in their favor almost like paid security guards....no far better actually....because it's powerful nature doing its thing...- the tides were safeguarding them from our watchful eyes ...more so when we tried to take pictures....it was also working hard to shoo us away from the bay keeping us from getting too close or from interrupting their action- by literally angrily splashing at us! The tides were also giving them a physical lift to the shore conveniently (rather comical sight really!) since they were slow moving like turtles on their own; No time to waste, no small talk, no fore-pay or shyness allowed pre-spawning I guess! The tides literally picked them up and tossed
them over to each other... as if they were perhaps destined to land up in specific batches (Yeah...No Disney style mating here for sure! Lol!). Yup! Tides and all of nature in fact conspired in their favor for this evening...and after reading up a bit more since about horseshoe crabs I'm left in awe of it even more! (Although mind you- being there in person certainly set off the creeps inside me too; had to take off before the number of horseshoe crabs rose from hundreds to thousands....which is what happens by dawn I am told! Crazy!! :-/)
Regardless I'm of course left pondering and marveling over nature!
Wondering how these ancient creatures pick out the perfect night-with
a rare big bright orange moon-(known as ‘honey moon’ apparently...but I'd never seen anything like this before...the moon rose right out of the ocean before our eyes as if it thought it was auditioning for sun-rise...and a friend rightfully called it moon-rise!); Such a clear sky too over us sparkling with stars as we never get to witness in the city…definitely a night to remember…or in
this case to celebrate horseshoe-crabs' creation I suppose…but how do these beings pick out such
a night so far in advance annually for such a party? Who sends out the invites? -And how do they know where and when to meet exactly? I mean look at us! Even with our weathermen's fancy predictions and all our technology we can’t even plan a BBQ
party outdoors a year in advance-without guaranteeing no rain let aside an orange moon!! Right!? And in mid-June to boot!? INCREDIBLE!!
A powerful reminder again that life in all its glory really is an incredible event I'm thinking!-And with some effort on our parts perhaps we can always feel connected to the the bigger picture...the greater network within nature....never forgetting to feel totally alive....or playing out our parts with all we've got....just remembering we're a significant part of something so complex and infinite.…. Just got to tune into the magic around us I guess! Voila!- Here's a big toast to staying tuned in!!
P.S. Here are some pictures taken from adventures in the days following post-Cancun-vacation (specifically of horseshoe crabs' spawning night...Yikes!! Lol!):
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| Picture by Zeynep of the moon-rising from the ocean at 9:45pm-ish... |
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| On queue...starting to arrive..... these fascinating most ancient species- in great numbers for their annual spawning on the most beautiful of nights...
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