I was driving into town the other night when I saw them. Under the glow of an orange streetlamp, the lilacs have popped. They’re on York Street, on West Dover, and near the Lily Pond. (Still a few weeks for the lilacs out in Surfside to bloom, maybe it’s the wind off the ocean keeping them tucked in.)
I’ve been watching the lilacs closely for the last couple of weeks, waiting for this most fabulous explosion of spring. The light is different; the air is different. Out in Quaise the other day, the smell of freshly cut lilacs filled Caroline’s dining room. Through the still-bare trees, I could see her Beetle Cat on its mooring just off the marsh, its yellow sail tightly rolled, waiting.
I know many around these parts mark the arrival of late spring with the return of lilacs and mackerel, but I always pair lilacs with horseshoe crabs. The Nantucket Conservation Foundation is monitoring the mating horseshoe crab population out at Warren’s Landing in Madaket. Volunteers head out with NCF staff to count clusters of crabs under the full and new moon high tides.
I like taking the latest shift I can get, which happened to be around quarter ’til midnight under the Flower Moon. Madaket feels a long way from town in the dark, rattling along washboard roads on low speeds, hoping not to get pulled over. Would the summer cops think it suspicious, a person out driving late at night, late for a hot date with some arthropods?
The folks from the Conservation Foundation were prepared, headlamps on and clipboards at the ready. We split the beach into five-meter quadrants, scanning the water for our prehistoric pals. We couldn’t exactly see the moon, as warmer weather brings with it a blanket of fog that settles most evenings.
Despite the full moon and high tide, the horseshoe crabs were not in the mood. We counted one (1) lone crab along the walk from Warren’s Landing to Little Neck, who we outnumbered 3 to 1. Oh, well. By this time next month, there will be hundreds gathered at the tideline at night.
How do the horseshoe crabs know the full moon is the most romantic lunar phase? Or are we learning from the horseshoe crabs, who have been here for 400 million years? They are far, far older than Cape Cod itself.
The horseshoe crabs have withstood the test of years, and they don’t change much. The rest of us, living out here in a place where the sand under our feet is constantly shifting, don’t have much choice but to change and, hopefully, evolve.
