The other day, when the wind was coming out of the south, Becky and I set out for Coskata Woods. We left the car along the side of the road near the Trustees gatehouse, past the Wauwinet Hotel, one of the few remaining grand resorts built in the Victorian era, as Nantucket redefined itself as a summer destination.
The road turns to sand and the houses, some of the few modernist cottages on the island that have not yet been demolished, look like they are ready to be swallowed up by the dunes. Pin pricks of hot pink rosa rugosa trail along the side of the road. I swear they were not here yesterday, and now it is as if a light switch has been turned on to reveal a new, green, world.
This has been a cold June so far, but the horseshoe crabs don’t seem to mind. When the full moon and high tides conspire, they gather in the shallows in search of mates. The horseshoe crabs practice strange couplings, two or three males attached to one female. I guess if you are a female horseshoe crab, the odds are good but the good are odd. When the tide is low, you can follow their swirling trails, traced in the sand.
We came across one horseshoe crab, stranded above the high water mark. Becky lifted the crab and carried it to the water’s edge. Were those legs moving, or just the wind? In the wave break, I think we both knew it was dead, how lifelessly it floated, its front end rising up. But all the while, I waited for the creature to settle. I kept hoping there was life in it still.
As we walked towards the ancient forest, there were more horseshoe crabs, killed in the line of duty. Some of them stuck straight up, telsons pointed to the mackerel sky, clotted clouds threatening rain. A few nearby herring gulls were no longer hungry.
Death is, of course, a part of life. Still, I felt badly for the crabs, that their night of crab ecstasy under the moonlight had to end this way.
Coskata Woods is an old maritime forest, a place I had only been to in the winter. In the summer, the salt marsh mosquitoes and greenhead flies sink their teeth into you, leaving behind bright red welts. Years ago, the January before the pandemic began, we drove out to the woods along the old sand roads. The ancient trees looked like bleached bones, gnarled and windblown.
How different the journey is in summer. After walking about a mile and a half over the sand, the desolate beach landscape transforms into a rugged forest. Cedar, tupelo, and maple trees, all twisted, form a green canopy. Stepping off the beach and into the shelter of the trees, the air feels ten degrees warmer. I have never seen these trees in bloom before.
A little ways off that path is a huge, old, maple tree. We climbed this tree last time we were out here. Now, it has been split down the middle, branches we once swung from resting on a bed of moss. More death, and yet, new shoots rise up from the branches. There is a huge opening in the canopy where the tree once stood. Now, light pours in.
