Horseshoe Crab and Helen Keller

A few weeks after our ecological trip to Kinmen Island in July 2023 to look for horseshoe crabs, I was listening to an audio book called The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. She lost her sight and hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. Her teacher, Anne Sullivan, taught Keller to speak, read and write. While a student at Radcliffe College, Harvard University, she wrote an autobiography detailing her early life. I was almost asleep in my bed, listening to her memories boringly recited in a formal male voice, when suddenly I heard the story of a horseshoe crab. The observations of our group being in search of these ancient creatures intertwined in my mind with the impressions of a blind and deaf little girl more than 100 years ago. The horseshoe crab, accidentally or not, linked us all across continents, time and history.