This spring has been a particularly prolonged one. The pattern is the same as many years — it warms a bit, crocuses poke up and then it snows. Repeat.

In a longing for color, I have been buying batch after batch of flowers and planting each new one in a previously unadorned patch of bare ground. In these cool, gray days, I hunger for the colors of spring to finally and fully emerge to decorate the landscape. A recent conversation with a friend reminded me of a similar story of turning the drab into loveliness — this one about a hermit crab.

Many readers are probably familiar with Eric Carle’s “A House for a Hermit Crab,” a children’s
picture book that, like its more famous compatriot, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” tells a seemingly simple tale of a small animal’s experiences accompanied by Carle’s eye-catching, colorful art.

In this one, the little hermit crab grows too big for its current shell and seeks to find a new one for his home. He finds his new shell, however, to be shabby and plain. And so, he sets off to decorate it. Soon, anemones affix themselves to his shells, waving their tentacles in the water and corals attach themselves and branch out as they grow. Soon, his shell is nearly garish with adornments and he is happy. He has created a little community for himself in this habitat of his shell. He even calls upon the snails to clean his shell and the urchins to protect him, and also the inanimate — the pebbles to make him a little wall around his home.

This is what happens in nature — particular groupings of living things sort out how to depend upon each other and sustain each other together.

This type of community also happens in a certain way with humans. We go about seeking not only to adorn our habitats but also to bring close to us those who are important and who we want to bring along on our life’s journey.

Over the past nearly 10 years that I have been writing Intertidal for The Times Record, I have collected a community of readers that I dearly value.

They have not only “decorated” my habitat but have formed an ecosystem of a sort in their curious questions and comments that have often led me to unforeseen topics that I then delved
into, always learning new things. At the end of Carle’s story, the hermit crab outgrows his “new”
shell to leave his familiar home and find yet another one. “They are like a family to me,” says the hermit crab, “How can I ever leave them?” But then, a new hermit crab comes along looking for a home, and he is able to pass his on and find another.

And so, I feel a bit torn writing to say that this will be my last Intertidal in The Times Record. I am sad to be leaving its “home” here. I am also happy to say that Intertidal will be finding a new home at the Harpswell Anchor. It isn’t exactly new, as I wrote for that publication regularly several years ago.

Admittedly, moving Intertidal makes me feel a little exposed, as a hermit crab wandering from one shell to another. But, as Carle writes, “The ocean floor looked wider than he remembered, but the Hermit Crab wasn’t afraid.” He looks around and sees new friends. “Barnacles! Clown fish! Sand dollars! Electric eels! Oh, there are so many possibilities! I can’t wait to get started!”,
he says. And so, I hope to build a new community of readers. But I also hope that some of the readers of this paper will follow me as I settle into a new monthly column rhythm at the Harpswell Anchor.

Thank you to everyone who has read this column in this paper for so many weeks over so many years. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and to share in a wonderful community. Please keep reading, and (spoiler alert) there may be a bit of a continuation of the picture book theme in my first article in the Harpswell Anchor, which will come out June 1. If anyone knows Eric Carle well, they may be able to guess which other sea-themed book might be featured.

Susan Olcott is the director of strategic partnerships at Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association.

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