I discovered horseshoe crabs as a child while my family vacationed on the Eastern seaboard.
Horseshoe Crabs washed up on Maryland’s barrier spit, creating marvelous spectacles for screeching toddlers. The creatures were sleek, green, foreign, with tails like whips. Underneath, they were at once frightening and fascinating.
In my teenage years, Connecticut’s colonial towns on the Sound became my milieu. I attended a private arts high school just north of Hammonasset Beach. A group of classmates or a Memorial Day party. We sat on a sunlit breakwater among fine historic homes, drinking beer drowsily and dangling our feet into clear, cold brine.
Inches below our winter-white toes, horseshoe crabs gathered in shallow water, humble shells as big as our privileged heads. Carefree pairing was the theme of the day. The horseshoe crabs’ unlikely physical maneuvers were far less clumsy than our social ones. We watched in awe their small, mighty efforts. And they mated as they have for 450 million years, shamelessly, unforgettably.
Lake Michigan's Left Coast 