Telling Our Way to the Sea by Aaron Hirsh

Author:Aaron Hirsh [Hirsh, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2015-10-10T19:50:29+00:00

2

As we approach the squat concrete pillars and slack catenaries of cable that mark the edge of the Diaz boatyard, I can see that it is almost empty: there are only three pangas left, and two of them are our own.

“The fishermen are all out,” I say happily to Veronica.

“Why wouldn’t they be?” she asks with a touch of reproach. Her feelings of doubt about the storm seem to go beyond mine. In fact, I think she might be determined to doubt it right out of existence—as if it feeds only on our credence; as if we will be fine so long as we don’t say the word hurricane. And without Graham here to balance such headlong commitment to denial, suddenly it feels important to get Veronica to acknowledge the meaning of that image—that huge circular sawblade of storm that materialized on the screen of our laptop.

“Well, there is a hurricane,” I say. “A real live hurricane.”

“It’s four days away.”

“But it’s huge. There could easily be storm surge in the channel.”

“Okay, Burnett,” she says, stepping over the cable ahead of me.

“The young souls,” I declare, “are on your conscience!”

She points at the panga sitting on its trailer beside ours. “Look,” she says, “the Islas del Golfo guys thought it was too dangerous to go out.”

This panga is almost always parked here. On its side is an official-looking insignia that reads ISLAS DEL GOLFO DE CALIFORNIA, which is the name that a certain department of the federal government has given to the islands out in the bay. Representatives from this department first showed up in Bahía several years ago, shortly after the announcement of Escalera Nautica. They came from the city of Ensenada, and they called themselves park rangers. They were here, they said, to protect the islands. This was all very puzzling—not just for us, but also for the locals, especially those who already considered it their own responsibility to look after the islands. Several years earlier, Antonio Reséndiz—ejido leader, environmental activist, and tireless protector of sea turtles—had organized a small association of townspeople to serve as the islands’ guardians. They had erected small signs on all the beaches, asking visitors not to litter or disturb the wildlife. They made monthly trips out to the islands to clean up. And they kept a little office in town. It was right behind the Diaz boatyard, and whenever we arrived in Bahía, we would go there to pay a small visitors’ fee in support of the association’s work.

But when the people from Ensenada arrived, they opened their own office, on the main street into town. They put an air conditioner in the window, moved in office furniture, and hired several locals to serve as their secretaries. The original office, behind the boatyard, was soon shuttered, but whether this was done merely out of a sense of bureaucratic inferiority—they didn’t have an air conditioner, office furniture, or paid secretaries—or rather because they were directed to desist from their activities, I’ve never really known.

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