Final Reflection – Rusty Bucket, Sand Island, Midway Atoll
I sit here with much in front of me. A vine of pohuehue creeps out from my feet toward the water, wishing to swallow the rusty mess of gears and axles that constitute the coastline. An albatross chick preens and sleeps on the sand, away from her nest, perhaps premeditating a great sea voyage of many years that could begin tomorrow. A monk seal finds peace, like me, in the protection afforded by this massive ring of coral reef that surrounds us all. We are ants clinging to the tip of a sinking rockberg. The sea would like to gulp our little islands and extinguish our existence, but we humans will probably kill ourselves and the seals before the seas transgress.
Midway is an end – and island’s last dying breath before sinking out of the terrestrial world
Midway is a beginning – a place where the banished creatures have come to hide from men
Midway is an end – a battlefield of war and a graveyard of heavy metal corpses, toxins, and lead
Midway is a beginning – a place where America wants to give nature a second chance
Midway is an end – a five-mile wide collection dump for the world’s plastics
Midway is a beginning – a haven for Laysan ducks and noddies and terns and albatross to procreate
Midway is an end – a last stop off for our dying tropical species before they leave forever
Midway is a middle – a middleplace to give the world hope, to bring continents together in global efforts to save one of the last beautiful places; a middletime between our ugly (and beautiful pasts) and our ugly (and beautiful) futures; and tonight, Midway is the middle of the world
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