COUNTING THE STARS
By Marissa Saltzman
Triumphantly, we stand side by side, grinning widely as our anxious parents
snap pictures to appease us and then hurry us away to tend to our battered
appendages. Each one of us sprouts some wound or another—a bloodied knee or
elbow, bruised toe, bitten finger, or a large sunburn. Some of us are on the
verge of dehydration. We have chosen a rough playground, but we love it
dearly.
Two hours before low tide, we had migrated to the beach, carrying nothing
except plastic buckets. With little patience for the group of parents who
followed sluggishly behind, bearing towels, water, sunscreen, lunch, and
other such useless items, we of young spirit pushed excitedly ahead along
the dirt path.
Once on the beach, the adults watched us with bemused smiles as we arranged
ourselves into two, three, or four person teams. We surveyed the beach
briefly, taking note of each and every rock. Without debate, we assigned
ourselves to different parts of the rocky landscape. Groups of older, more
experienced kids ran off to the higher, more dangerous rocks. The smaller
kids started examining rocky crevices in the shallow water.
Our goal: to collect as many starfish as we could in our water-filled buckets before the
ocean reclaimed our playground for the day.
This annual tradition of ours is much more than a simple scavenger hunt.
Rather, it is an opportunity to unite as a team—to forget the differences in
age and the pressures that come with them. We work together, we climb
together, we fall together—no one is left behind. Any parent who chooses to
engage in our hunt is immediately swept back into the realm of youth and
boundless energy.
With untiring enthusiasm, we harvested the rocks for our five-legged
friends. Many a star was rehydrated from the drying heights or rescued from
the perils of a hungry crab. We marveled at the sight of a starfish
engulfing a mussel and grieved for the unfortunate sea star who had lost a
limb in some unknown encounter.
The frigid water burned our feet and hands, and the hot sun scalded our
backs. Before long, nearly everyone had misjudged the stableness of the
seaweed and had slid down the barnacle-covered rocks which were hidden
beneath.
For those who choose not to participate, our quest seems foolhardy and
unnecessarily strenuous. How little they understand what an utter relief it
is to have your only concerns involve the collection of stars. For a scant
few hours, work, school, and all the stresses of life simply melt away with
the rhythmic beating of the icy waters. We are free to amble about the
stars—collecting them and admiring their peaceful perfection.
As the tide washed back over the rock-laden beach, we were forced to abandon
our hunt. With renewed vigor, we began counting the stars and returning them
to their home. As our record number has grown so high, we are now rarely
able to beat it. Yet, even the youngest members of our group do not seem to
particularly mind. While it is always nice to reach for the stars and beat a
previous record, the feeling of community and teamwork that we have achieved
far outweighs tangible ambitions.
With the best kind of exhaustion there is, we trudge back home; the sight of
hundreds of stars will follow us in our dreams for days.
