In
a short time from now, the sun will rise, and the sky will burn red. I
am two-hundred and twenty-eight feet below sea-level, paddling by headlight
from an abandoned harbor on the Salton Sea. Although I understand that
the color of the sea is green, I cannot yet see it.
Certainly
I can feel the weight of the salt-inundated water on my paddle. This sea,
the largest inland body of water in California, and certainly one of the
largest inland seas in the Americas, did not exist a century ago. It was
1905, and farmers had been irrigating crops in California's Imperial Valley
by circumventing canals out of the Colorado River. But floodgates clogged,
irrigation routes broke, and in two years, the salton sink had become
a sea, albeit an accidental one.
Landowners
were angry and confused. Apparently, the snakes were also unhappy about
losing their land, and their retreat to higher ground caused land to be
filled with 'hundreds of 'em.' The smell is rancid; not that clean smell
of fresh cut-fish in a harbor, but a wafting smell of decay, windless
plumes of fish-stink rising from the sea.
When I land on the beach, the
boat makes a harsh scraping. This beach is made from the spines of dead
tilapia; some fish-heads still have flesh. Others, near the shore, are
still alive, but barely. By now, the thin line of white pre-dawn allows
me to see my way up off the shore. Some time ago, my landlord spotted
me walking out the door. He looked both ways and whispered,
"Hey, I got
something to show you." He walked me into the back room of his apartment.
"They're six feet tall," I said. "Yup." "But you just planted them three
weeks ago?"
"Yup."
"So what exactly are you going to do with six foot
hemp plants?" "Give them to my family. You know I don't smoke marijuana
anymore."
Of course I knew that. Landlord was raised the son of a mining
expeditioneer, who taught him how to scout in the mountains of Canada.
By age twenty, Landlord was leading gold expeditions in West Africa, a
prospect that would allow him to retire at age twenty-three, and merited
two cases of malaria.
