Wave after wave, without rest for eons, sweeps up and dashes upon the haggard flanks of the shore. The shore is a rocky terminus of a steep but small cliff.
Two young girls we had been watching picked their way across, deftly scampering in the lull of the surf. The slate grey embankment fell from a green tangle of palm and jungle vine where pelicans roost and rolled into the sea, skipping across the water in hapless islands. The grizzled little islands grow and shrink and submerge, only to resurface shiny, black and new. This jetty bends the corner from beach to beach; misshapen hillocks of stone. I see the girl with long dripping hair blithely slip from a crevasse now filling with water. She crests the stony shelf, her friend close behind. They move in an encouragingly sure manner. Bridget and I stand and watch. They know the score; the tourists enter the park rank-and-file, dishing out seven dollars apiece for their share of perfect rolling waves, mangrove lagoons, and capriciously chattering monkeys, the girls negotiate admittance otherwise. Before we are caught and are politely shown the tollbooth we save 56 dollars in the coming weeks scrabbling from the surf across the rocks. The girls are out of sight, around the bend and I turn to Bridget eyebrows raised. Where I am expecting to see the look of caution and foreboding I see a face lit with the air of bravado, rouged with mischief. As I often think of my new bride as cautious counterpart to my natural inclinations, increasingly I am struck by her penchant for adventure.

"If those girls can do it…" she says what I am thinking but stops short as an angry wave dooms itself to sea foam upon the rocks. I sell her short again in my mind wondering if she can do it. Of course she can and does, but for some damn reason I tend to be afraid she's going to hurt herself. I seldom share that fear for myself, but I'm not afraid to see my self bleed.

The noontide sun smiles over the undulating waters and dazzles our eyes. The jetty reaches a long arm out over the tide pools. At the end lies a tower of rock; rounded by the wind it looks like a haystack. A steady breeze brings dust to the cracks and fissures in the dome and over time scrubby grasses stubbornly seed, taking to a hard fought life. Over our head a long dead branch dips low as a great pelican settles in to roost. He looks like a pterodactyl. We stand atop the first promontory watching the waves come to the rocks below us. The place is a crustacean killing field! Corpse after corpse, upturned and splayed in the sun, crabs dot the haystack rock. They look like willing sacrificial virgins. Each one upside down and fading in the sun. I can see the trauma of enterprising seagull beaks. Bird shit is everywhere. How depressing it would be, eaten alive then having yourself shat beside you. Whatta way to go. Not to mention the existential crisis! Along the course of our trip, which rarely left the beach, I grew accustomed to the skittish temperament of the crab population. You may think you have worries, but not a moment elapses in a shore crabs life that isn't marked by the sharp terror of predatory assault. Their distinct side-to-side scuttle is a continuous evasive maneuver. Crabs eek from their holes periscopic eyes first scanning with the desperate patience of a paranoid schizophrenic. Evolution has granted their entire anatomical being to protection, detection and survival, yet they still wind up down the gullet of a gull or perhaps worse, my dinner plate. We settle for a moment in a dry spot above the breakers. Bridget is just as agile as she looks and now over the first few knolls and enclaves of churning seawater she's none the worse for wear. I however have scraped my shin. And I was worried about her. She unshoulders her water bottle, taking a long swill then passes it to me, saying,

" Do you want to maybe draw or something. Sit a while? This is like our own private island."

The girls were long gone, lost around the bend. To our right the haystack outcropping loomed up, challenging the waves. Ahead, little islands winked in and out of the water. About us sea spray ripples like a gossamer curtain. We began sketching but I hurry, finish and stand while she sat patiently at work. She is an incredible artist, and with no formal training. The wellspring of her talent flows from her patience and her ability to not simply to look at something but to see it. When she sets herself to something it is with a loving resolve that I admire and a times slightly envy. I kind of hop from stone to stone and fool around a bit. As I lunge forward I send crowds of dark blue crabs scampering madly. This of course made me feel like Godzilla or some damn thing, so I leap and make dinosaur noises. The tide pool denizens fleeing before me. I really get a kick out of stuff like this. Of course it makes me feel powerful but it's more than that. I feel like something other than human, something less soft and small. God? Maybe. More likely Godzilla.

If you unfocussed your eyes the terrain would swim at the edges and seem to slide sideways. You may not see the deep blue crabs at first, when not frightened they move rather slowly, with a great patient purpose. The wave would break and two may appear from the receding waters, inching with tiny mechanical clicks. Another waves will engulf them entirely and draw back to reveal three more migrating landward slowly. Once my mind alighted on the insipid little idea my eyes slid over toward Bridget. She is face down in her shading, good. I picked up a stone and lob it seemingly towards the ocean, but I am aiming for the cluster of crabs on the last rock. The stone glanced of the rock; the crabs jerked and hunkered low. Missed. Oh, I like this game already. I throw another more forcibly. Where five crabs had been, four remained. The fifth was little more than a smear of goo dribbling down the rock. I completely obliterated it. I feel as much remorse as a kid knocking down carnival pins, probably less. I look again over at Bridget, nothing. I know she would disapprove. That my fun would stop. When I was a kid I would stalk the dewy gardens with my single pump BB gun and spray slug entrails across the grass. Over and over my mischief would turn them inside out, all the while imaging them fallen soldiers in our great war. It was easy not to care; these slimy invertebrates were hardly animals, more like breeding snot wads. Came the day I felled a sparrow, that softly dying sparrow shivering in the gravel. I hadn't really thought that I would hit it. I remember it was the softest most beautiful thing I had ever touched. A tiny rill of blood gleamed from the edge of its beak. I stared fixedly at the sparrow cupped in my hands. Pulling on its wing I watched the feathers unfurl and extend to full length, realizing all the while that my actions indeed have dire consequences. This perfect little creature would never again take wing. Never again play from branch to branch calling proudly. Guilt thumped in my head. How sad this was. How sad my mother would be. How sad.

But crabs are different. They're not cuddly, they don't appeal to any normal function of my humanity, besides being darn delicious. They're not even mammals for Pete's sake. I cock my arm back and let fly. A hole burst among a shuffling cluster knocking several into the surf. The next rock struck a particularly fat one blasting it in half, momentarily dotting the horizon with shell. I enjoy the sport immensly. I officially blame video games and rock and roll. The crabs are creeping back wearily, not really knowing what else to do, then I…

"What are you doing."

She says it the way you say something when you damn well know the answer.

"What are you doing, why would you do that? I'm sketching the landscape and you're killing it. Why would you do that?"

The rock in my fist dropped, as did my eyes.

"Nothing." I try to sound casual.

"Why would you just kill like that, for no reason, these crabs are just living out their lives." Her voice wore a garment of deep hurt. I feel disappointment in myself that I had let her see it. But as she looked at me with a furrowed brow and wondering eyes, eyes wondering just who I was, her despair came slowly to my heart. Why would I find casual pleasure in crushing creatures that fascinate me so? How could I justify it? She doesn't have to tell me that crabs are just as important as monkeys or rhinos or humans, all of which I would never dream of bludgeoning with a rock. She doesn't have to say it; not with her eyes, not with her mouth. Simply the knowledge that she, my most esteemed, believes it was reason enough to concede myself. It was my turn to feel small, like the crabs, trying to evade the weight bearing down on me.

"What if a boulder fell from the sky and killed me, what if you saw who threw it? Would you want someone throwing rocks at you, at your wife?"

"No. No I would not. "

She carries the sanctity of all life in her smile. You can feel it shine. You don't have to be there when she stops for every wandering tomcat or rescues a tiny baby grasshopper from certain death. You don't have to watch her fill her palms with hermit crabs or hand feed giant iguanas that would run from anybody else. Standing there with her eyes still on me, though softening, I change. I feel it like a long, satisfied shiver. That part of her sweeps over me and takes seed, and I feel the taproot of respect for all life take hold. Could I love the crabs as I loved her? Not quite, but I don't think that is the goal. The goal, I think, is to respond to the awesome privilege and responsibility of being human in the most positive ways possible. i.e not killing crabs.

That evening I lounged outside our rented room set against the garden terrace. What had passed between her and I had been on my mind in the park and all day. I think she had forgotten; just josh at his childish play. Perhaps-but perhaps not. I was thinking about life and how it was everywhere I looked, you can't escape from it. You can't escape your interactions and interconnectedness moment to moment. There are even little bugs living in the ice at the north pole, and somehow I know I am responcible for them. Life,the Earth is teaming with it. Butterflies jerking past in the pink light. Coconuts drooping from the fronds above me. An ant trekking up my foot tickling my shin. I pluck him, off and peer at him closely, then squeezing, dimly perceive the inaudible pop of his body giving way. Nothing. I feel nothing. Totally neutral. I pick up and crushed another then another. Then another. There is a little pile of tiny, crinkled arthropods forming beside me. I picked up another and held it very close to my face. I could see him flailing and his mouth working. He really isn't much different than a crab. So why no "feeling?" I try once more to feel the presence of this one individual life form completely unique to the Earth, standing alone, the sum and the parts. Nothing. I pinch. Nada… no swirling of the cosmos, but maybe if I tried another. Nope. So where is the threshold? When does life slide from paramount to pathetic? I could crush ants all night but I think I'm beginning to realize, the answer is never. It's all a matter of perspective. And mine just needs to change.