Finding Fairy Shrimp

For the past few years my dear friend pantslessly waded into a vernal pool on their land every April with a PVC pipe to collect some gunk and send it into a group of citizen science people. The citizen science people then tested and inspected the gunk. Last week, we found out that there were Fairy Shrimp in the collection samples. Fairy Shrimp are tiny, magical (obviously, look at their name) creatures that have been found in deserts, mountain lakes, and Antarctic ice. It seems they made their way to Vermont by hitching a ride on a glacier.

These little creatures can survive extreme conditions — largely by snoozing for centuries until the conditions are right to wake back up (more scientifically known as diapause).

The Fairy Shrimp have been welcomed into our community with much to-do. Lots of frantic voice notes and Googling and texts like this: 🧚🏼‍♂️🦐🤯. We are even having a Fairy Shrimp Party on Saturday.

The discovery of the shrimp in the gunk had us all wondering about who else is on the land we steward. What other creatures do we cohabitate with that we know nothing about? They brought a collective sense of wonder that felt generative.

Fairy Shrimp’s modus operandi got me thinking about all of the things that we, as humans, are going to find ways to survive in the years to come. While we can’t enter diapause, we are going to need creative ways to be okay. We will have to learn from shrimp, toads, woodchucks, whales, loons, and vines.

All of this will take a sense of collective and individual wonder. I think we fell so in love with the shrimp because they were an opportunity to wonder at a time that feels wonderless. Or, rather, the things we wonder about are things like: “how could this happen?” “Who could let this happen?” “How are we letting this happen?”

This is not a time for a dormant imagination. We can use moments like the Fairy Shrimp moment to reacquaint our imaginations with all that is possible. All that can be. All we must do to survive, together. That’s where our imaginations belong.