I just find that incredibly sad. The Gulf Coast has been declining for decades, of course. The insistence of people building gigantic condos on the beach, wiping out dune and wetland habitat, has seen to that. But there have always been stretches that have remained relatively pristine.
All my life, I’ve been going to these places, because they were natural, serene, and beautiful. The sugar-white sand of the beaches of the Florida panhandle, Alabama, and Mississippi have been a welcome retreat for as long as I remember. I clearly recall the first day I ever swam in the ocean with my dad and my two older brothers. They taught me how to body-surf in the breakers, and we swam all the way out to the sandbars. I remember being freaked out by the little schools of fish that swarmed around our legs, occasionally bopping into us, until my dad caught one with his hands and showed me how harmless they were.
Later, all four of us got our SCUBA qualification in the same class, and we spent years diving in the Gulf, sometimes off the beach, and sometimes off boats. I’ve seen dogfish, bull sharks, a manta ray (!), octopi by the score, stingrays, sea stars, urchins. Once, I even saw a massive shadow that I’m convinced to this day was a whale shark.
I’ve trawled for shrimp. I’ve watched manatees. I love those blazing summer days when you’re on that white sand, and the sun is so intense that you can easily go snowblind, and the furnace-like heat just envelopes you. I mean, it’s so hot that it’s almost audible. There’s almost a sense that the incredible heat is muffling the outside world, except for the screaming gulls and the surf. Some may think that sounds like hell, but it’s utter bliss for me. And hey, there’s always the water, right?
Nope. Not any fucking more. I have a son who’s 2 months old, and I had very much looked forward to showing him the ocean and the beaches at Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Pensacola, Panama City, Mexico Beach, Destin, Fort Walton, Apalachicola, and a hundred other places. I looked forward to taking him diving at the jetties at St. Andrew’s. I looked forward to showing him Gulf State Park.
It has been incredibly sad realizing that I’ll probably never get to do that. That the smell of oil will probably linger on all my favorite places for decades. That a scum of oil will be killing the crabs, the fish, the beach mice (including endangered species), the birds, and everything else for YEARS. That those gorgeous white beaches, the most glorious I’ve ever seen, will be irretrievably stained black.
The Gulf Coast will never be the same in my lifetime.
It may not ever be the same in my SON’S lifetime, and he will never form those same attachments to that beautiful place that I did.
It makes me want to cry.
