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Strange
Waters Originally published in Black Warrior Review Our
first morning in Cahuita, Libby and I woke up early to go for a dawn walk on the beach. Just after From our house, you could not see
the beach, only a stroll away from our front porch. Vines, bushes, grass—every kind of
abstracted, tangled vegetation lay between the dirt road and an ocean
view. There was hibiscus, too. Growing up in Rising out of the sandy soil, lean
coconut trees pillared up and fanned their palm leaves against the sky. From up there, I thought, you could scan
for ships heading to the Standing by the sea in front of
our house, we looked south, then north.
A mile either way, there were no landmarks that we could see, no
building or sign post or even a singular tree, all the familiar shapes and
measures by which, back home, we might have steered our way back. We screwed a bamboo stick into the sand to
mark our place. We took off our shoes to feel the
sand between our toes. Our feet sank
ankle deep, and walking was clumsy until we reached the waterline, where the
beach was packed down flat as a tabletop.
We weaved in and out with the surf, although our weaving was less
frantic than what we saw from the sandpipers ahead of us, those stiff-legged
runners that probe the water’s edge until a wave sends them scurrying
back. Now and then, the wave wins, but
the sandpiper cheats, leaps up into the air, opens its wings, and flies to
dry ground. Perches of driftwood lay
everywhere—twigs, roots, and branches big as my arm; logs, trunks, even whole
trees—all whittled, polished, or splintered into chips and slivers by forces
I knew nothing about. Some pieces were
twisted into surreal shapes, and I could not keep secret strange impressions
that slipped inside my thoughts. I told Libby how wooden bones
curled around empty spaces, as if nerve bundles or blood vessels had lodged
there, as if ligaments had once latched themselves to knobby joints. The sea’s crucible of brine and pressure
had metamorphosed limbs into these monstrous amputations. In worn roots I saw the shapes of creatures
turned wooden, as if old gods had crossed the borders of time, space, and
philosophy to wreak vengeance or have a little fun at our expense. A whole tree trunk, twelve feet long and
five feet around, ebbed and flowed in shallow waters like the dead body of a
small whale. In time the trunk would
sluice into a crease of sand, settle there, and become a whalebone bench at a
Viking Hall. Libby shook her head and
laughed. “What planet did you say you
were from?” “Not Vikings,” I said. “I meant conquistadores.” Only a little more than nine degrees north
of the equator, we were, of course, in another world. * * * On October 12, Today, most people in “La Frontera” was stenciled on the
police car parked outside the Cahuita post office. We lived in the lowlands between the
Cordillera Central and the Caribbean Sea; even today, central mountains and
eastern ocean mark the borders of Raza can also mean “a ray
of light, coming through a crack.” Nearly 500 years ago, Spanish
conquistadors found few riches here, at least not those mined from gold. Costa Rica was and is still home to many
peoples, however diminished their numbers—the Bribri, the KekóLdi, the
Cabecar, the Boruca—groups who were not so famous or numerous as the Aztec,
Olmec, and Maya to the north, nor the Inca to the south. There is no Popol Vuh sacred text,
neither written nor oral, associated with this small section of the
Mesoamerican isthmus that lies between latitudes 8 degrees and 11 degrees, 13
minutes north. There is no Yet the world’s largest collection
of pre-Columbian jade is on display at the Museo de Jade (in Spanish,
ha-day), and most of the collection comes from Only two-and-a-half years removed
from her life in In In * * * In Knowing how much Libby loved the
ocean, I wanted to join her in the water, even if the endless horizon of the When we finally walked hand in
hand into the water, I found that Libby’s assurances might be true. I could not believe how warm the ocean was,
even warmer than a heated pool. Underneath
my feet, the ground was soft. There
were no sharp stones, shells, or driftwood chips, just fine black sand
cushioning my feet. Waist-deep, the
water enveloped me like an immense bath.
We kept walking, farther and farther from shore, but the beach sloped
so gradually out to sea, and the waves barely reached as high as my
chest. I felt the high tropical sun
evaporate the water from my shoulders.
I slid down beneath the water to escape the heat. I bent over, cupped my hands, then rose
again, hauling up sand as if I were panning for gold. The ocean’s currents pushed and
pulled against my legs, but there was no riptide here, whatever that
was. I could learn to love this warm
water, the sand pillowing my feet, the steady waves I could keep an eye on
and brace for. Libby was floating on her back,
and I watched how the waves carried her body up and down, how she arched her
head back and lay on top of the wave, and how the current carried her, little
by little, farther from shore, farther away from me. In my desire, I walked towards
Libby, dove into a wave, tried, and mostly failed, floating. When I fell out of my dismal float, I did
not know just how far out I was—not far, really, maybe 100 yards, but now the
log where we’d left our sandals was hard to see, almost tiny. And when I stretched my legs, the bottom
was not there. I stretched again and found a
toehold. I managed to keep the water
level with my neck, but without firmer footing, I could not walk in the soft
sand. On tiptoe, I tried to propel
myself back to safer ground. As the seconds passed, I was
learning better how waves worked here, the gentle waves you see that churn
incessantly, high and frothy, towards the shore, and the insidious underwaves
that inch by inch were nudging me out to sea. I tried not to panic. I let my body fall forward into a swimming
position. Although I was no great
swimmer, I knew that I could thrash across the length of a pool. All I needed was twenty, thirty feet closer
to shore, and I’d be all right. After
half a minute, I found out that swimming in an ocean was very different from
swimming in a pool. When I stopped,
let my feet touch down, I found no better footing than before. I’d only swum in place against the ocean’s
current. Bobbing in water up to my
chin, I started to feel something like the fear I imagined before I’d ever
stepped into this ocean. Luckily, I was closer to Libby
now, and when I called to her, she came and held me in her arms. “It’s all right,” she said, “we’ll be all
right, just stay calm.” Timing the incoming waves, she
guided our bob-and-walk, walk-and-bob, until we reached a spot where the
ocean floor rose up a little.
Chest-high, then waist-high again, the water level receded. I was relieved to be safe, but more
relieved that I hadn’t completely embarrassed myself. I had kept the worst of my panic
hidden. But in my desperate swim
against the ocean’s current, I’d strained muscles between my lower ribs and
shoulder. The soreness lasted through
the night, and like my fear, eased the next day, but lingered. In 1995, thirty-seven years old, I
could count on one hand the number of occasions I’d actually seen an ocean
horizon. The first time I was nineteen
years old, visiting a girlfriend’s family near Avalon, When Libby and I walked on the
beaches of Cahuita, we watched the sun rising in the east. Blue crabs lurked at the edge of their
burrows then snapped back inside when we walked too close. We saw the translucent bodies of jellyfish
stranded in the sand. Small shells
littered the beach, whole or in pieces, most too tiny to bother carrying
back. Sometimes Libby would find one
that was pretty enough to keep, one with a bit of color or peculiar
design. Once she found a sand dollar,
the fossil of its flowering body etched underneath. The creature’s strange symmetrical slots,
carved perpendicular to the perimeter, looked for all the world to me as if
they waited for coins to be deposited.
But although old stories linger here about eighteenth-century pirates
and treasure, we found no gold, no jade pendants, no Spanish doubloons. Another time, we were walking on the
beach at Punta Cahuita, at the center of the Parque Nacional. The point, about three miles southeast of
town, marks When we first arrived in Cahuita,
the beach near our house was clean and clear.
Later, I learned another lesson on how oceans work, the way currents
and tides eventually heap driftwood and seaweed on the shore. Once, I found a syringe. Perhaps someone had left it behind after a
night in search of la pura vida.
More likely, I think, it had come down the coast from the hospital in
Puerto Limón, about 25 miles north.
Our beach was cluttered for weeks.
But in time, the ocean swept our small stretch of the Playa Negra clean
again. We mostly had the beach near our
house to ourselves. Now and then, we
would pass other people walking here, both locals and turistas. Once, a man named Garvin passed by, a local
ladrón we were warned about, striding god-knows-where, smiling, and
swinging his machete as he walked. One
day, a tour group on horseback rode past us.
We were living here during the off-season and did not see many
out-of-towners, but when we did see Germans, Americans, Canadians, or
English, their costumes marked them: Tiva sandals, Banana Republic crewnecks,
Evian water bottles, Nikon Cameras.
Sometimes, a woman tied a red bandana around her neck; sometimes a man
wore a pink Nike bicyclist’s cap. Or these gringos wore
cut-off jeans, faded t-shirts, and old tennis shoes. They wore what we wore, and stood out as we
stood out. On rainy days, I wrapped up
in my REI 100% nylon, hibiscus-red windbreaker. In Cahuita, local tourists stood
out, too. Like the foreigners, most
ticos went to more developed Pacific coast resorts and protected beaches
there, such as On the beach, our most common
companions were a few local boys who brought their surf boards and paddled
out twice as far from shore as I would ever go, out where the waves rose six,
eight, or even ten feet high, just about right, I guess, for twelve and
fourteen year-olds. A few miles down
the coast, near Puerto Viejo, more daring surfers could find the best waves
in A few days after my first failed
excursion, Libby and I tried again, wading out to sea, once more luxuriating
in the warm water. And once again, the
ocean beguiled me. Libby, happy to
return, lay on her back and floated away.
I was happy enough to be walking waste-high in water that was as
tranquil and warm as a neighbor’s pool.
I practiced my floating, too, and tried to follow Libby out to
wherever the currents might take her. Soon enough, I found myself in
deep water again, not quite over my head, but one wave away from going
under. This time, however, I had the
memory of Libby coming to my rescue, of recovery, and when I called out to
her, I felt perhaps a little less panic, a little more confidence that I
would be all right. Then, just as Libby reached me, I
turned my head seaward, and only ten feet away, a creature flew out of the
water, all fin, wing, and tail, then dove underneath a big wave. The Manta Ray was perhaps five feet across
and six or seven feet from triangular nose to needle-tipped tail. Whatever confidence I’d found
before, I lost in those few seconds. I
was in an ocean, where animals lived beneath the surface—mantas,
dolphins, sharks, whales, eels, squid, jellyfish, crabs—and all the
creatures, ichthyic or crustaceous, that I had no names for. This was no forest, where if you came by an
animal, you could see what you were up against. Walking in the woods of In the weeks that followed, Libby
and I returned to the water often, but I could never again go out very
far. I would watch her drift and
float, the waves carrying her out to sea, where the boys and their surf
boards dared to go. She looked so
peaceful, floating on the water. I
tried not to panic for her, but sometimes, when she was so far away I could
hardly see her lying flat against the crest of a wave, I’d call her back,
afraid I would lose her to whatever forces lurked out there. That distant morning, when we
explored our beach for the first time, we walked south almost two miles, to a
rocky cove just north of town. On the
walk back, we found the bamboo marker we’d left and located the narrow gap
that Winston had carved through the foliage.
That day, after our walk, we were
surprised by a small herd of cows trotting down the road in front of our
house. No farmer was leading them,
they just headed north in pairs, keeping a safe distance from the strangers
that had emerged from the green gap beside the road. After they opened up a little space between
us and their raised rumps, they slowed down to the ambling walk that cows’
bodies are built for, whether moving down a dirt road in Costa Rica or
grazing on a hillside in Ohio. The cows were different here,
their hips bonier and broader, their heads longer and narrower. But the walk—steady, four-legged—was the
same. |
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