The Horseshoe Crab and I

The southern Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina are a beautiful, beautiful place. The landscapes are as old as dirt - older, really - the rivers are clear and cold, and the views - oh, the views - how they will leave you breathless, marveling at your relative size and significance in the grand old scheme of things. 

But the sea.... the sea never fails to put the breath back in me. This part of the world spawns its own kind of marvel, too - there are so many mysteries and oddities to be found here. But there must be salt water in my soul, for a deep breath of warm, dense, salty air is more than just fun or good; there's just nothing like it. It's open spaces and possibilities and newness and familiarity and cycling and recycling and calm and turbulent and easy breezy, too, all-in-one. 

This little horseshoe crab and I share an affinity for the coast and our current location in Sarasota, FL (although I'm still fully physically here; the owner of this molted exoskeleton may be long gone by now), but we also both have some beef with our current conditions. I have plenty of complaints about being at summer camp, far, far away from the person I need most, eating food that ranges from subpar to merely edible, hanging out with middle schoolers all day, and working at a job that's really a lot more work and a lot less play than one would imagine. I'm sure he'd have plenty of complaints about having spiders for cousins, being routinely crushed up as eel bait, and being sucked dry of his fine blue blood for use in human medicine. Not to mention the molting six times before full-grown thing; that can't be comfortable. 

However, what we share in frustration with our relative plights, we also share in adaptability and resilience (at least I'll try to be as adaptable and resilient as he is...). We'll leave what we don't like or need here in Sarasota, and take with us some personal growth and a positively changed self.

And definitely a few big gulps of ocean air, too.