"Shame"

As an outdoor writer, sportsman and conservationist, I feel compelled to write about the disaster which is now washing up in stained waves all along the shores and coastlines of the Gulf Coast, from Barataria Bay to Pensacola Beach. I have sat down to write this no less than a half-dozen times; every time, I have become overwhelmed with emotion and barely able to put anything down in print.

I’ve never struggled so much with a story; never come so close to having a topic defeat me. But quite frankly, I haven’t known just how to say what I feel until now. I fear that my meager words cannot do justice to this catastrophe. And I desperately want to get this right.

The bay over which I sit as I write this has not yet been affected by BP’s oil. Its backwaters and creeks and streams and estuaries have not yet been molested by the tortious crude which is gushing out of BP’s broken well like our way of life flowing out of our ruptured economic and social veins. But it is coming. It is all around us. I swear I can smell it on the morning wind.

I was somewhat afraid to walk outside when I woke up this morning, apprehensive of what might be awaiting me on the surface of the water. I feared that I would walk out to find that the surface had been turned rust-red from its native blue-gray; that instead of watching mullet jump out of the water between the docks, I’d be watching hundreds of globs of oil float atop the surface, a sheen sully the bay, or ruddy crude lap against the pylons, boardwalks and lifts.

As I sat there on the side of the bed, knowing I could not avoid going outside, I feared how I would react and whether I would be able to handle it if my fears were out there on the water awaiting me.

Stepping outside, however, I was greeted by a morning that, by all accounts, seemed normal. A brisk wind had the tide racing. My heart sank as the tide rushed toward me from the same direction of the closest reported tarballs. I know it is only a matter of time now. A matter of time and someone else’s inexcusable neglect.

So, like any other morning on this bay which, over the years, has come to take up more and more space in my heart, I poured a cup of coffee, collected the dog’s bright orange bumper and led him outside. And like any other morning, he and I walked the length of the dock down to the pier where we resumed our years-long game of fetch. I silently rejoiced at watching him glide through oil-free water with his beloved bumper clutched firmly between his jowls.

Later, my son and I practiced throwing his cast net and did a little fishing. Under normal circumstances, I groan when he cranks a catfish up to the dock. I dislike handling them. “Remember, buddy, no catfish,” I chide him. “But, Dad, how can I tell what I’m going to catch before I catch it?” Today, however, I relished every catfish, and was less concerned with getting finned. I relished every croaker, every ground mullet and every pinfish, too. And while I’d have loved for him to have reeled in a speck or even a small drum, success today was not measured by the individual species he caught, but by merely the catch itself.

I don’t know whether all this will be permanently changed by this crude insult which has been done to us here along the Gulf Coast. I cannot imagine it will not at least be temporarily altered; that my dog won’t be able to leap into the bay after his bumper and won’t understand why. That my son won’t be able to throw his cast net or send a live shrimp sailing on the end of his monofilament line out over the water in hopes of catching something. That my daughters, who are younger than he, won’t know this life for years now because of it.

What I do know is that an untold number of people have had their lives virtually destroyed by this event. Pure, tough, hard-working people whose families and livelihoods are wholly dependent upon open water – for shrimping, for fishing, for crabbing, for oyster harvesting – and who are guilty of nothing more than choosing an honest life of the sea.

Shame.

I know that an experienced multinational petroleum conglomerate apparently had no plan for a cataclysmic event such as this, and even convinced the federal government that an accident like this was “very unlikely.”

Shame.

I know our coastal estuaries and marshes – which we were already losing at an unsustainable rate before most of us had ever heard the words Deepwater Horizon – are being overtaken by a relentless current of rusty poison, and it may be years before they’re healthy again.

Shame.

The Brown Pelican, an iconic symbol on the Louisiana State flag, now faces an uncertain future as its coastal home is inundated with crude. Just six months ago, it was removed from the Endangered Species List, after tireless work and dedication of conservationists. Now, just as it has started to regain its foothold, the Brown Pelican’s future is again threatened.

Shame.

Even as I write this, hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil – perhaps millions – continue to gush into the Gulf every day; for fifty-something straight days with no end in sight. At least with a hurricane, there is a beginning and an end before we can start the cleanup. With this, however, it just keeps coming in waves and no one knows how long it will last or how long its effects will be felt.

And I know that, despite my efforts, I have failed to do justice to the magnitude of this disaster and the people whose lives have been devastated by it. For there are no words to adequately capture something like this. Perhaps one comes closest for me.

Shame.

(c) Roger Guilian 2010