Island Time
I haven’t been dry since October.
For weeks I’ve been moist and oily on Padre Island, the longest barrier island of hundreds from Mexico to Maine. It’s only a mile wide in most parts, yet 113 miles long. And it’s always damn humid and I’m having to constantly clean rust from the bike chain which has become a real chore. Since everything is always damp I bought a second pair of swim shorts and I’ve been alternating wearing them each day. At night I’ll dip into the hot tub and then shower with the trunks on so they’re clean. I haven’t grown gills yet and I’m still passably human though, so I still do human things like talk to other humans and share human jokes, consume human nourishment, and photograph golden hour.
Another human has come to this pier and is performing fishing.
Across the channel on the mainland sits the peculiar city of Corpus Christi. With the proximity to Mexico the culture of Día de los Muertos is prevalent here, and streets were blocked off on First Friday so local artists could display their work. The WW2 aircraft carrier USS Lexington sits at pier as a museum ship, and I love sitting in the captain’s chair imagining what I could do with just one carrier. Tug boats wrangle massive oil tankers past it and into port, and it’s neat Googling the ships to see where they’ve come from in the world. Nearby is Texas’ biggest aquarium, full of exhibits on the gulf coast. My favorite exhibits are the ducks, who bob about merrily on artificial waves as they listen to speakers that emit the sound of them crashing on the beach.
But as I continue through the aquarium and other places, I’ve slowly realized there’s a casual negligence here. People leave their cars turned on everywhere. An aquarium exhibit sponsored by Exxon shows how good oil rigs are for the environment with the artificial reefs that grow on their pillars. A car commercial shows an environmentally conscious young man driving his big block V-8 on the beach, dragging a claw from the tow assembly and doing spins in the sand as he collects plastic containers.
Fucking amazing.
It’s full on culture shock upon realizing the breadth of their disregard for the environment. But it’s not their fault, not individually. They aren’t intentionally sinister, they’ve just been gaslit like the ducks in the aquarium, lulled into an artificial reality created by industrial propaganda. Oil built their economy, and now there’s a conspicuous disconnect in the average citizen between what they do and the environmental repercussions of it. This mindset is systemic and deeply embedded, and deviance from this behavior is met with suspicion. People looked at me like I had 8 legs when I grabbed a free bag from a kiosk on the beach and gathered garbage.
It must be frustrating to be an environmental conversationalist and spend each day fighting the complacency of the majority. A hard task, given the intelligence of the average American of the 21st century (and I’m a fucking idiot too, don’t get me wrong). It’s no wonder that some become militant like Earth Liberation Front. We’ve never held such dominion over the earth as we do now, and so many depend on us.
High tide isn't as big in the gulf since the mouth is narrow and further blockaded by the Caribbean islands. I wonder if there's a current that rushes back and forth along the islands at the mouth though, where the moon pulls to and from alongside it.
Most people don’t realize that we’re in the middle of an extinction event, this one of our own doing. The awful truth of it all is that we’re on the precipice now. For want of a big block V8, neatly manicured lawn to show our friends and neighbors, Amazon delivery of toothpaste when we don’t want to go to the store, and endless other trivialities, we unleash an apocalypse.
But it’s not too late. We can and we must be custodians of the wilds. If we can only evolve and hold the line we can make it, I’m sure. We can usher in a new renaissance with technology, and free from pecuniary upkeep we can become painters and poets and do what we want, writing and drawing and creating and experiencing and photographing and fucking. I hope we don’t completely screw it up.
