Crab Metaphysics — Becoming See

On our first night at Netarts we walk out to the estuary near camp. Our footprints glow green in the sand. Surprised, we cavort on the shore, stomping, shuffling, hopping like children to make our footprints glow. These bio-luminescent dinoflagellates reflect the clear night sky. The Milky Way arcs above the pinpricks of glowing sand. We stop to discuss night time navigation and identify Ursa Major and Minor, Polaris, Cassiopeia, Taurus. Enthralled with the juxtaposition of glowing sand and sky, I sprint backwards up the dark beach while giggling in delight.

Two days later, I pull an enormous dungeness crab out of our last wire trap. I'm grabbing him from the back and I've picked up crabs this way a dozen times before, but this guy didn't get to be this size through timidity. He reaches back with his whopper of a claw and latches on to my right middle finger. My yell of pain and surprise only ends when "Snappy" goes flying face first into a five gallon white bucket to join his buddy. I feel bad that I threw him, but my finger doesn't.

A fellow student crouches down next to the bucket and talks to Snappy while I nurse my finger, praising his strength and sacrifice. Snappy does not want to be eaten. I can't fault him for that. I don't want to be eaten, either. In a conversation later, I propose that my friend might not be so calm around Snappy if he'd had his finger snapped. He responds that even if he had been, what he felt wouldn't be the same as what I felt, and that he'd be more likely to just process the pain as sensation.

I ponder this comment for the rest of the day, even after I have devoured Snappy's offending claw. In my habitual freezing cold shower after returning home, I tell myself that the pain I feel is just sensation. I stay in five seconds longer than normal. The water still feels like ice needles.

After our crab dinner and a day of mushroom hunting, Grey treks out to a rusted water tower to start a fire. We give him a half hour head start, then take the long way around, hiking over a dune to approach Grey from a direction we hope he won't suspect. One student practically trips over what we think might be a coyote in the dune grass--a warm and panting blur that slips away into the night. I express that I don't want to be eaten by a coyote. I'm told that the coyote won't eat me, just kill me. I am somehow comforted.

We bunch together a little closer after that, until we've made our way along the edge of the pine forest where earlier Chris and David found a king bolete mushroom to add to our heap of golden chanterelles. We almost stumble into Grey's camp, his fire shrunk to a less noticeable patch of coals hidden behind the brush. We split up within sight of the glowing ring and begin to slither towards him.

My face is pressed into the wet grass and sand. I low crawl to the fire at the rate of about a foot every 20 seconds. One student inches ahead of me through the scrub grass. I can only see him because of his lighter colored pants. I wait for him to approach the fire, then observe from mere feet away as he arrives into the inner circle of light, still undiscovered. It takes me another 15 minutes to make my way 10 feet. As more people stand up and join the circle, the group becomes louder, talking and laughing. I can move more quickly, but I caution myself not to become overeager. I stop, rest my head on my forearms. Breathe. Listen to the merriment around the fire, listen to the rumbling ocean waves.

I want to be a part of that circle, but the task at hand is too important to rush. I approach from directly behind Grey, convinced that the other students can see me--I can see and hear them so clearly. No one raises an alarm. I reach out a hand and place it on Grey's head. He lets out a pretend squawk of alarm. Once I join the fire, I look out along the line I came from and realize that I can't see two feet from where I'm standing. The whole world shrinks down to this circle of flickering light, evidence of my prior passage to the flames obscured in the rich blackness. I realize that my journey through the sandy grass featured a singleness of purpose, a razor sharp focus, and the exclusion of all extraneous thoughts--that the exercise wasn't so much about sneaking up on Grey as it was about patience and clear mindedness.

Later, nestled into my tent, curled up under wool blankets, grey wool beanie pulled over my eyes, the fire, the crab, the wheel of luminous sand and sky swirl together. I dream that the earth, solar system, galaxy, then universe shrink to a single point of light. Our universe is joined by uncountable others. They come together to form a kaleidoscope of ever-changing shapes that stretch and morph across an unfathomable deep blue black. Each time I think I've reached the end--the universe of universes is THIS ultimate shape and size--the entire grouping shrinks to a single point of light and is joined by another collection of universes that add up to a different gently flexing three dimensional shape. I realize that since there is a point I'm observing this spatial expansion from, there must be something else outside of the swirling lights. When I tire of my journey into these quivering Mandelbrot sets, I pilot my sliver of consciousness in a violent rush back to earth, back to my body in my nest of blankets. I spend a few quiet moments shaking as I wake up, trying to place my own body into the context of the multi-verse, world rocked.

As we head back towards Portland, we stop along the road for a brief expedition into the dunes. The group wanders off into a tree-filled depression to learn about bird language. A huge boulder pokes up above the distant ocean mist by Netarts bay. I sit on top of a dune and watch a match-head sized black beetle toil up my knee. I blow it off and it lands a foot away on the sand. The beetle's legs skitter across an invisible ceiling until it flips over, then continues, unperturbed, along a straight line and in the same direction. A few minutes later, it is lost into the vastness of the sand.