Here's the thing: I'm not quite done.
There's more to say, about Crab Town.
I didn't/don't give up quite that easily ...
So, after I got back to my car and continued on down the formerly bumpy (but recently paved) road — Third Beach Road — I pulled over at that sad, stand-alone chimney on the right, just past the Peabody's Beach parking lot, opposite those revamped outbuildings now part of Norman Bird Sanctuary, safely across the river/brook/stream that previously kept me from my destination, and got out. I was determined to reach Crab Town. I needed, or just really wanted, to know: Is it still busy and thriving in winter??
No, it isn't, or not in the same way. For one thing, it looks/seems smaller ... though, at the same time, there's more space to move around. No need to stand back or step aside for kids and campers who walk down from the Bird Sanctuary to learn, look and poke at the rich habitat of crabs & other critters enjoying summer residence in the pools, so fresh-and-deep or murky-and-warm depending on the status of the tide.
All I saw were barnacles (dead?) and seaweed (alive?) and random muck (much of it alive) that never managed to float or get carried away with the crabs, wherever they go in February, as they're not here, or they weren't visible ... not a one. They can't have gone far; they're small, on short legs. They could be right there, right offshore, waiting just on the other side of the rocks for spring tides to push them shoreward. Or they could be buried. They could be anywhere. Seasons and related currents/patterns/instincts are powerful, I suppose ...
Meanwhile, lest I twist an ankle, easy to do in clogs, I paid very close attention to my footing on the "puddingstone," as my daughter — a camper and later an assistant counselor (or ANT, for Assistant Naturalist in Training) at the Bird Sanctuary — calls it. They all call it puddingstone. They hike to Hanging Rock, made of puddingstone. They even make puddingstone ... with chocolate pudding, mini-marshmallows, gummy worms and the like. At other camps, in other places, one might call that concoction "dirt" and attribute more scientific names to rocky conglomerates ...
But here, today, it's puddingstone.
And then, at that moment, I was cold.
So I turned, again, to head (run!) back to the car ...
