Preamble:
Tide pools have always been an obsession of mine. Streams, rivers, and really any water I can peer into – but tide pools in particular. It’s probably why I loved books like E.O. Wilson’s The Naturalist and Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing. Replete with descriptions of the shoreline, reading these passages would keep me rapt and invoke visions from my own trips to the shore – fiddler crabs crawling through the reeds, redfish tailing to find a meal on top of a bed of oysters, the slow accordion of a jellyfish moving through water, the thrill of luring crabs with string tied to a chicken neck, dad scooping them up with a whoosh, pelicans diving from above, the calls of gulls in the wind.
When I was little I had great anticipation for our family trips to Ocean Isle and Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina. Those trips comprise some of my most vivid memories, and I always wanted more time on the beach. We got a couple of weeks here and there but rarely long stretches – never enough to fully settle into that feeling of the shore as home rather than vacation. That changed in college, when I got a full month for three summers in a row to study monkeys on Cayo Santiago, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico. I couldn’t have dreamt up a better summer experience – getting paid to hang with monkeys and chill on a tropical island with fun, brilliant monkey labbers, and make friends with street dogs. Shout out to The Dude!
After a quick trip to the panadería to grab a pastelillo for breakfast and a cubano for lunch, we would walk the long pier at Punta Santiago and take a monkey-chow-filled boat out at 5:30 AM. A short trip to the island, and then a couple of hours doing research among the 800-some free-ranging rhesus macaques. Midday was too hot to work, so we had multiple hours of free time to do anything we wanted. I think most of the researchers just read a book in the shade and enjoyed their lunch. I found that I had the entire 40-acre island to myself. A kid in a candy store, it was sometimes difficult to decide what to do. I would catch yellowtail for homemade sushi and fight the occasional barracuda, snorkel around a sugarboat wreck, dig up Taíno pottery, and photographing monkeys. But perhaps my favorite activity was discovering tide pools and losing myself in their miniature worlds. I was often alone for excursions, but my friend Bailey Spaulding would always join for tide pools. On the far side of the island we found many, and we’d sit and discover heaps of sea creatures in their own little aquariums. We would wait patiently as all sorts of creatures began to emerge from beneath rocks, sand, and crevices after their initial wariness of our silhouettes faded. Sometimes we would chum with rock-smashed snails to see what else might appear. We were always surprised by some new critter, and would gasp when octopi came clambering and slinking for a free meal!
Tide pool!:
That I get to share this love of tide pools with Jasper is something pure and wonderful. I was not at all sure at first that Jasper would enjoy his first tide pool. Jaspy can be particular about being carried – “down!” – the rocks are sometimes scorching underfoot – “hot!” – and of course keeping an almost two-year-old focused on anything is a challenge of its own. So I welled up a bit when I watched Jasper take to tide pools with such curiosity, enthusiasm, and wonder.
“Tide pool!” Jasper says with excitement as we approach the shore. And then an “oh, fish!” as soon as we start to see little blennies and gobies darting for safety. We make our way from pool to pool toddling – sometimes with assistance, sometimes without. One tide pool may be empty, while another captures us for ten minutes. In each pool we find something different. I point out what we see and Jasper repeats as best he can. Starfish! “Star… fish.” Crab! “Crab.” Anemone! “Ana monkey.” He is the first to hear a little Cessna flying overhead – “airplaine!” – or spot a “pec-a-lan” diving down for a meal.
Jasper seems to have a pretty good sense now of where he can go on his own and where he needs a helping hand. He has learned to climb over the rocks, to request an assist when things get dicey – “hand!” Sometimes he will crouch peacefully and peer into a pool, scanning for movement with great concentration. Other times he will chuck in a rock and hop in as if it’s bath time. He has started lifting up rocks to see what might be hiding underneath (that’s my boy!). I get a great sense of satisfaction being able to pin down a little crab he’s disturbed and hold it in the palm of my hand for a brief second so Jasper can study it.
There is one spot with a blowhole on Playa Pelada that he especially loves. Thankfully, with due caution, he holds my hand while the rush of an incoming wave sprays seawater ten feet overhead, Jasper belly-laughing all the while. A little bit of fun and magic for the both of us. The two things that will never get old for me are the sunsets and the tide pools. Maybe that is because both reward a certain kind of attention. They ask you to slow down, to watch closely, and to be present for subtle changes – a color deepening in the sky, the unfurling arm of a brittle star, a tiny claw emerging from beneath a rock. With Jasper holding my hand, it does feel new again. Of course I loved tide pools before, but sharing them with Jaspy has somehow made them more vivid, more fun, and more alive.
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