When I was little my grandfather, an oceanographer and marine biologist, would take me tidepooling. I think the last time we went was in my very early teens. I’m pretty sure it was his knees, why we stopped. It’s not like we abandoned the beaches and canyons and cliffs, but at some point we didn’t go clambering out over the slick jagged rocks before full sunrise anymore.
As with every time I was able to really get out into nature, I felt at these times at my most free. Scrambling with bloodied knees and scraped hands across the treacherous landscape, I would be at one with my body, with the elements, with the sting of the salt and the sound of the waves speaking some ancient language uninterpretable to something so crass as a mammal.
We would stop at likely pools or cracks, however wide or deep or shallow or still or active, and he would show me what lived there and why it chose this one spot in
the dynamic, dramatic universe that is a tidepool system. Our anemones weren’t poisonous and at first I enjoyed poking them to feel them close against my finger but as I grew older I began to see
this as bothering them unnecessarily. “Bother” is here of course a relative term; it’s unlikely that something as simple as an anemone can feel something as complex as irritation, but they were
hunting and living their lives and every time I forced one to close, I was causing it to expend energy unnecessarily, interrupting their natural cycle. In my “wisdom” nowadays, I’ve dialed back
this fervor somewhat and do realize that poking one gently now and then will cause no actual harm. My favorites were always the Aggregating anemones, aptly named Anthopleura
elegantissima.
Tidepool sculpins were some of my favorites, and in fact I have since those days always erroneously associated the word “sculpin” with the work “skulk”. There were
so many wonders! Shrimp of many kinds from the dazzlingly colored to the nearly invisibly camouflaged, baby rays, limpets and chitons and barnacles, small morays, opaleyes, tube worms, brittle
stars, sea stars, urchins. Delightful crabs spanning the range of possibilities: rough, smooth, spiky, shiny, dark, spindly, squat, sedentary, frenetic, patterned or plain. Rockweed, kelps (so
many kinds of kelp!), whelks, scaly tube snails, mussels, sand dollars. Sponges, bright and warty. And if we were lucky, shoals of tiny deeper-water fish sheltering here until large enough to
brave the open sea.
And this one time, we scored gold. Not real gold; even better. My grandfather suddenly exclaimed and had me hold very still as he gently, very gently,
reached elbow deep down into the water and scooped something up. Into my cupped hands he deposited a beautiful little octopus. Its body was the size of a golf ball and it rested in my hands,
observing me gravely, as each and every one of its delicate little arms explored my hand. When, after four or five seconds, it had established for itself what the shape of things was, it slid
smoothly around the side of my palm and dropped the 15 or 20 centimeters into the water, whereupon it inked, for safety’s sake, and vanished from our lives back into its own world.
This remains, around 40 years later, one of the most magical experiences of my entire life.