by David Nuñez

At the beginning of the year I wrote a story about how I spent my New Year’s Eve. It began like this: "… So I came back early and after a walk on the beach I decided to go to my favorite spot. I never had a favorite spot before, but I found one about a month ago. I won’t tell you where it is, because I don’t want you to go there. Find your own. I like this place because it's one of those rare beautiful spots that has not been built up yet. Funny how so many times we see a beautiful place and immediately want to build on it— forgetting that the very thing that makes it so beautiful is the absence of buildings. From my spot, you can’t even see any buildings; every time I've gone, I've been the only one there. It’s a long walk over rocks and jungle, but that’s also part of its charm. It’s not just the being there, but the getting there and coming back that make this place special to me—the slow and steady easing away from and then back into the things of man …"

I took this walk again early this morning before breakfast. Yesterday evening I got word of a drum of something washed up on the rocks and wanted to go find it before heading into the office. I spotted the drum after only five minutes, and could have gone back to bed. Instead I looked out at the sunrise on this beautiful, calm morning and decided to keep walking. I’d heard rumors of my spot being developed into a giant resort and wanted to see it, perhaps for the last time, as I remembered it.

Everybody that’s spent any significant amount of time here has a “when-I-first-came-here-it-used-to-be-so-different” story. I’ve heard these stories so many times that my eyes inevitably roll and my mind wanders whenever I hear that introductory phrase. I knew about the changes; I’ve seen the photographs and read the studies. I do, after all, work for an environmental center. As I walked along the shore, I thought about the drum of mystery liquid and where it may have come from. I thought about that time I found trash from 42 countries on a morning stroll in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve. I thought about the disturbing drop in the number of turtles nesting on our beaches, and about the alarming levels of pollution in some of my favorite swimming spots, and about the insane plans for transforming our quiet little community of Akumal into a city of 250,000, within a couple of decades. I think about these things all the time. It is my job to ponder the many ways in which this place becomes less and less special every day and how I might look for solutions to the environmental problems these changes may cause. And yet I was wholly unprepared for the scene that came into view as I rounded the point and saw what used to be a quiet rocky cove now missing not only its boulders but its stones and pebbles as well, the stark glare of sand in its place.

Some people may consider a sandy beach to be an improvement over a rocky one. But to me this bay seemed stripped and naked, empty, lost. I wanted to wrap a blanket around it, take it home and nurse it back to health. This beach wasn’t my spot, but it had always been an important part of the journey—the transition zone where my mind slowed down, the anticipation beginning to soothe my soul as I neared my destination. I walked across this new sandy beach in a daze, utterly confused, not knowing how to feel, not understanding what had happened. I reached my spot and was relieved to find that it had not yet been intruded upon. I pushed all negativity out of my head and gave thanks for this moment—me alone, early in the morning, on the rocks, by the water, in this beautiful place.

As usual, I felt this place restore me as I stood still, soaking it all in. But as I turned around and began the trek back home, it hit me. The sight of my footprints on that unrecognizable sandy beach was just wrong. They shouldn’t be there. The sand shouldn’t be there. After all this time, I finally realized what it is that we are up against, and it hit me—hard. It knocked me to my knees and I wept for the loss of a place that was precious to me.

In my New Year story I had written:

"… By the time midnight rolled around I was only halfway where I wanted to be, on an empty rocky beach … I stopped to reflect on the year gone by and to give thanks for things past and things to come. Then I sat on a rock … looked out across the water and over the rocks … over the moonlit waves …"

In the following months I would make this walk many times, and each time I stopped along the way at this rock. Any time I needed to think something through, work something out in my head, I would take this walk and pause at this site. It was a place of quiet reflection and thanksgiving. That rock was sacred to me. That rock is gone now, and it breaks my heart.

As I caught my breath and stood up again, a short prayer escaped, whispered from my lips—help me do a good job, help us do a good job.

A work crew came out a few minutes later and started raking and separating the few remaining pebbles. I approached them and they informed me they’d been doing this work for only two weeks. Construction is to begin in another week or two. I wished them a good day and kept walking. I thought of yelling at them, insisting they stop, demanding they bring back my rocks. But it’s not their fault, they are here from Chiapas trying to earn a living and maybe send some money home. They don’t know this place. They don’t know what it meant to me.

A bit later I encountered the engineer in charge of the entire project. I can’t really explain why I didn’t smack him over the head with a coconut, or at the very least shout at him, tell him to stop, demand an explanation, an apology, something, anything. There is a part of me that wishes I had, a piece of me that still demands satisfaction. But the rest of me knows I have a job to do, and is glad I didn’t act that way. Instead, I introduced myself, and invited him to visit us, suggesting that his company and our Center may be able to find some common ground, some shared interest we could join forces on. I cannot explain why or how I managed to behave that way. I’m just grateful I did.

A few hours later he did indeed stop by our Center, and expressed an interest in supporting our work and giving something back to our community. I honestly hope this is the beginning of a constructive dialogue and that he will, in some way, support us. We have a lot of work to do. We need all the help we can get as special places continue to disappear along this beautiful coast.