Excerpted from Cascade (Great Place Books, April 2024)
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There is a starfish that sees with the surface of its body. The brittle star doesn’t have eyes defined by little globes cased in eyelids—its whole body sees. To see itself, then, is just to interact with the world, to move through it. I wish I could experience the world this way.
The boat rocks up and down. I slide from white plastic seat to boat floor, where I grip the metal above me, staring through the railing into the ocean. The water makes infinite patterns, waves, impossibly coordinated lines of blue, gray, white, and brown.
I can still see Erin standing in the kitchen, frozen, her arm bent, her hand holding her cell phone inches away from her ear. She couldn’t say anything to me at first. The house was quiet, still, all music subtracted. I was supposed to go to college and med school, to become a surgeon so I could pick things apart with steady hands. Blake wanted it for me as badly as I wanted it for myself. When Blake died, I couldn’t keep walking in the direction that kept me on her map. I had to go somewhere else.
On the boat Michael’s face suddenly looms over me, concerned, dirty blonde hair going wild past the edges of his hat, and I immediately see my ex-boyfriend Julian’s face in his—the sharp, dark eyes, the long eyelashes, the gap between the two front teeth—before I notice the wrinkles that crease out to his temples, the crooked (maybe broken?) nose, the sun damaged skin. It’s like I can see how Julian’s going to age, his body fast-forwarded into the future, standing in front of me.
Twenty-seven miles didn’t sound like too many. My ears start to heat up, my nose dripping down my chin. Michael reaches for the straps of my lifejacket and tugs, testing their tightness. He yanks the carabiner that’s attached to my middle, that runs a line from me to the boat so I don’t go overboard. “Are you good?” He yells over the wind and the engine.
Our destination is the Farallon Islands, twenty-seven miles past San Francisco. You can see them on a clear day from Berkeley, all their islands making one crunchy line on the horizon. Erin used to think it was good luck, spotting them, proof of the universe’s benevolent will.
“I promised I’d take care of you,” Michael says.
I first met Michael when I picked Julian up from his house in the Oakland hills and he invited me inside. The house was nice, a Craftsman perched atop too many stairs. Strange sculptures in the corners, brightly colored lumps of clay. There were framed photos of water on the walls. On the fridge, some of family. We sat in the den, where Julian and his dad traded off inserting records into the record player—wandering into the corner, lining up the grooves, then muttering a few words about what they’d like to put on next. Michael assembled a cheese plate. I didn’t eat anything until he nudged a plate toward me again and said they’re from the Cheeseboard, “You have to try one.” Julian wanted to drink a beer, but his dad gave him a look: “Keep it outside the house.”
Berkeley parents were often like this—cultured, smart, interesting, self-pronounced weirdos with beautiful houses—but I’d never believed in them fully. The dads were too self-referential. They read the news too much and they wanted to teach you about Roman history or sustainable fruit farming. Michael was different. I wanted to hear everything about his life and what he thought of the world—I’d touch all the details of his house and ask about them so I could prompt him to keep talking. I complimented the water portraits and found out Michael was a scientist and a researcher. “Worked with the water a long time,” he said, as if the ocean were a colleague. Julian scowled.
I ate another piece of cheese mashed into a cracker. Grease gathered in shiny circles on my fingertips. I learned that Michael studied marine mammals and I asked more questions. Where have you gone for work? What’s the biggest animal you’ve ever gotten close to? The sun sank through the windows and into his arms, the body hairs bleached blonde from all the time in the field.
“You go for the males when they’re sleeping—” Michael told me and Julian. He was describing the summer he first tagged elephant seals. It was clearly a story Julian had heard before, but I didn’t care that Julian didn’t care. “—The females notice you right away, barking and shrieking, but the males don’t wake up. You sneak up to the dozing male, take his flippers in your hands, spread them to find the webbing. Find your courage and—staple the tag down between the fingers and then get the fuck out of there, because they’ll spring right back and bite your fucking hand off.”
My moms never swore when I was growing up. I thought about being Julian, listening to this story the first time Michael told it, excising my boyfriend from the space next to me. I exhaled, “Fuck,” and laughed, because that’s what felt natural, using his language, not mine, like I was sitting in a sports bar with this man, the only girl in a crowd of guys, my elbows on the counter. I uncrossed my legs, let my knees float outward, and my voice slowed and deepened. Julian, not yet erasable, watched me closely.
Michael studied elephant seals when he was younger, but around the time Julian was born, he switched his focus to great white sharks. He’s been running a long-term study of individual great white sharks, tagging, photographing, and counting the sharks that pass through the Farallons and feed every fall and winter. “It’s actually less dangerous than working with elephant seals,” he said, but I didn’t believe him. He squeezed his hands, smiling, enjoying telling me this story. I leaned in, wanting more. Julian got restless and, tugging at me, told his dad we had to go.
Julian was supposed to go on this trip, this boat, not me, but he got pneumonia and had to drop out. I turn away from Michael’s face, back to the water. I’m hidden at the front of the boat, which all the men onboard warned me was worst for seasickness. The bow makes consistent waves that spread and foam at the boat’s sides; a jellyfish appears for a few seconds before the wake disappears it. Its top is large and circular, a see-through brain with orange squiggles, and it drags behind long yellow tentacles three times the size of its head.
“You might be more comfortable inside the cabin,” he tells me, but I want to stay where I can see where we’re going.
Our boat is large and sturdy, made of steel. In decaying red paint along the side, there’s a woman’s name: MARIANNE. Marianne’s front is curved, and her back is squared off with another boat on top of it. I’ve been told this is a two-part trip: first on the big boat, then on the small. The man driving the big boat is a volunteer. He has a friendly face and a faded neck tattoo of a vine. He will leave us on the islands and come back with supplies in a few weeks.
When I took his place, Julian was surprised that I wanted the job—he told me the work is long and slow. “You don’t get answers right away,” he warned me. “It storms that time of year. It’s hard work.” He was being condescending, but the description also sent adrenaline up the back of my neck.
“I’ll stay at the front of the boat,” I tell Michael. “I’m good, thanks.”
There hasn’t been land in hours. My hair blows away from my face and I turn toward where the rolling hills of Pt. Reyes should be, continuing on our right far longer than San Francisco on our left, but now it’s only fog, a gray-white mass which splits occasionally, the layers thinning to reveal the horizon line, water forever.
When I researched what the boat ride would be like, I kept reading: “washing machine.” There was a report of a racing sailboat that crashed when it came around the corner of the southeastern island and was toppled by a huge wave. The water is still and the foam constant and a wave comes out of nowhere, bigger than I imagined possible, and the boat goes up and down, hard. Side to side, hard. Then it’s calm again. My stomach has to catch up.
There is water along my hairline and I don’t know if it’s spray or sweat, because I feel hot and very cold. My chest tries to crunch down so it can meet my stomach but the lifejacket is so tight and so rigid that I’m stuck sitting up straight. Michael tells me to focus on the horizon. I hear his voice but can’t find his face. I’d closed my eyes. I open them, straighten further, think about what it means to be tough. To walk with sea legs. To make it.
The seasickness gets worse when I see the spikes of the islands dart up into the horizon. The boat is rising and falling with the ocean, making the islands grow huge and then disappear, magnify and slip away.
I know the Farallon Islands are mysterious, maybe haunted—unusual, striking, called the “Devil’s Teeth.” I know this is the type of place people whisper about and want to get close to. And when I see the islands for the first time it’s as if my mind glitches and sees a picture, not a real part of the world. A memory, not the actual. Spikes rise out of the ocean. Rock pyramids, sand-colored and deep gray, coming out of the water like the ground being made. All lined up, some too circular, a row of oceanic planets. Birds squawk and swoop in circles around the islands’ peaks. There’s another sound too, a deep honking, as if a chorus of laughter was filtered through a French horn. A smell hits me, equal parts sulphur and salt water. It shoots up my nose, making it crinkle.
The approach puts a terrible feeling in me, a ringing of the internal bell of intuition, as Erin would say. Intuition is fine and easy to manage when I have the option to respond to its signals, but it’s too late for that, there’s no possible no now, so as the islands get bigger, the inside warning gets stronger, me angling directly toward the threat. Vomit is stuck in my throat; I refuse to let it out.
My legs buzz with adrenaline. The boat slowly comes to a stop and its momentum shifts backward into a float. Up ahead, what looked like a flat row of islands has tilted on a diagonal—the largest one, Southeast Farallon, sits in front, the even ground of it, where we are going, ten or twenty feet high. I can make out, behind it, to the left, another island of comparable size, separated by a skinny channel. Even Southeast Farallon, which I’ve heard Michael call SEFI, is surrounded by smaller rocks, tips and sharp edges careening over the flat top, as if the island is constantly splintering and making new bodies, islets that crowd the waters. No wonder the sailboat crashed. No wonder people aren’t allowed here.
My ears tickle. Then the back of my neck. Flies crawl over my knees and into my hair. There are flies everywhere, on all surfaces, especially the human ones.
The waves crash hard against the sides of the rocks, sending mist over the flat part of the island. We wait. I see Michael’s jeans and his boots in front of me. He’s there to un-clip me. I don’t know if I want this freedom again, but I shove the vomit down and nod and slowly stand. My legs are no longer legs. They’re machines I don’t know how to operate. I use them, for the moment, as props and stilts. I can stay standing. Michael squeezes my arm. I hear a loud whistle from the back, and I find my duffel bag and backpack and make my way to the stern, where two men, one a skinny guy with a mustache who doesn’t seem much older than me, the other a man with a battered Nets hat and flannel over his fleece, work together to get the smaller boat into the water. Michael explains they use the smaller boat, a beat-up fishing boat with a white hard top, to tag and identify great white sharks by taking photos of their dorsal fins.
The gray rock is closer. The honking surrounds. That feeling is rising in me, loud and anxious.
I step into the tagging boat, where the water gets much, much closer. I fumble for a seated place. The boat can’t be much longer than the sharks we’re here to watch—twenty feet? The hard top covers the controls—a steering wheel, a digital navigation system, a radio—and some of the front in shade. There’s a worn leather seat good for two butts, maybe, behind the wheel. Around the controls, there are thin lanes on each side, then benches that fold up to reveal storage compartments. Nets hat is shoving his bag into one of them. When he turns and sees me, he snickers and goes to take my bag, then stops himself— “May I?” “Yeah, please,” I tell him, “Thank you,” letting him take all my belongings and push them into a small space away from me, feeling stripped of most protection, wondering what it was about me or my face that made him laugh.
The boat’s front is pointed but before that, flat and even—good for standing, balancing, watching, tagging. I picture myself out there, holding onto the silver railing, reaching for a huge animal swimming by.
As soon as everyone clamors aboard, the boat shifting as it adjusts to our weight, I meet the team. Nets hat is a tour guide for the islands who also dives for sea urchins. He used to be a professional harpoon fisherman. He’s worked on Michael’s expeditions sporadically over the years. A sometimes boat captain who has been face to face with a great white. Who thinks it’s a warm day today. I shiver and hold my breath trying to contain it. “Will,” he growls, “—is the name, but you can call me Captain.”
Mustache is Zeke, a graduate student, this trip’s research assistant. With a Free Palestine t-shirt and a bucket hat that ties at his chin. It’s not his first time in the field. He looks at me a little bit like the guys at pickup basketball do. His polite smile gestures at respect but really equals tolerance. He’s disappointed to be stuck guarding me. He’s nice enough not to say it but not nice enough not to think it. I’m tall enough that he will try, because there’s the tiny real fear that he could embarrass himself. Zeke stands up straighter, nodding at me and showing me the underside of his chin.
Michael is the head researcher here, our leader. “This is going to be fun,” Michael says. “And educational. I promise.” He clears his throat. “Now—and I mean this seriously—hold on.” I grip the bench with one hand and the railing behind me with the other. “I’m Lydia,” I tell them, before Captain takes the controls and pushes us forward in little bursts, timing it with the swells so that a big wave doesn’t crash us into the rocks. As the tagging boat approaches the island, I see that the rock it’s made of isn’t as solid up close: there are holes everywhere, holes I can see the full round shape of, holes that seem to burrow so deep they lead all the way back underwater. Messy layers of moss, kelp, and other green organisms cover the rock’s surface in patches, and when I look down, the water is interrupted at points by underwater cliffs, granite jutting out, covered in brightly colored everything: there are oranges, pinks, and reds, seaweed waving in all directions.
There is a loud mechanical sound and then above us, a crane—a huge metal hand attached to a bunch of ropes that swing out over the water and then our boat. The hand with its strings hovers over Captain, who grabs hold and starts attaching it to us with a series of massive yellow carabiners. The crane is how we get on and off the island. The coast is too rocky to safely dock anywhere and the waves would eat up a wooden dock if they ever tried to put one in. The bigger boat that brought us here is getting smaller in the distance; soon it will disappear.
I hold onto the ropes on the edges of the tagging boat as water flies in my face and the sky is reoriented over the ocean. I want to tell Zeke that I like his shirt—to establish that we’re on the same team. But to have him as my teammate is something I earn, not what I say, so I stay quiet. The crane lifts us up, some faraway metal whining as it does. I am above the water now, above the surface, closer to the sky now than the land. I am in the in between. Gripping the ropes tightly, I peer over the side, where ten feet below us, a wave slams into the rocks. The spray reaches my face, my nose. Then the crane breaks ground—we are lifted above the island’s flat surface, maneuvered over concrete. Zeke slaps a fly off his neck. Michael pulls another from the strands of his hair and flicks it into the air. There are flies all over Captain’s hat and face—he does nothing.
“Welcome to East Landing,” Captain bellows, scattering the closest few. “Wind’s on our side today.”
“Yeehaw,” Michael says quietly. His belt buckle is a dirty gold, a tiny bull carved into the metal.
Captain expertly drops us onto a layer of rubber tires stacked on top of each other, a makeshift landing pad. The boat squeaks in. The water is very blue—and white, and gray, and sometimes green—while the island is mostly dust. Dirt and dust and rock. Some moss. Some muddy grass. Invasive weeds. Dead birds and clumps of feathers and bird shit. It is not a place for people. It’s loud—birds squawking, seals honking, waves slamming and fizzing, flies buzzing into my ear canal, wind whistling, so loud that I find myself reading lips, as if there’s almost no room for our sounds.
Before we step off the boat, Michael hands out brushes and bleach wipes. “For your shoes,” he says, “To make sure nothing on the mainland hitched a ride.”
We grab our bags and follow a slight trail into a barren valley. This flat stretch of land, the size of a couple football fields, is traversable via concrete path—three feet across, the concrete crumbling and eroding—that cuts neatly through the grass and dirt and rock, making a very minimal grid. I trace the path across to where it gives way into dirt, a line that weaves in zigzags up a very steep hill to an old lighthouse. At some points there’s a railing, wooden and splintery. The hill looks too steep to take straight on. The lighthouse leers over us, the hill hundreds of feet high, the sides shaky with loose rock. There are barely any signs here, only the ones warning that this is a protected area.
We step onto the concrete path and follow it straight and then to the right—in the middle of that flat stretch, beyond which waves are visible, more rocks, and more water, there are two houses that look like ghosts. They are big and square with chimneys poking up from each, flanked on their right sides by lone trees, slightly sad and wilting. They’re the only trees I can see on island.
Captain leads. My hair whips around my chin and spirals around my ears. Strands get stuck in my mouth. I hold onto the straps of my backpack and follow. Captain laughs at me again. “Smells bad huh?”
“What?”
“You’re holding your breath.”
“Oh. Fuck, I—”
“One of the largest colonies of seabirds in North America nests on these islands. Think of all that bird shit. Hell yeah, it smells.”
Michael keeps his gaze down as he walks, his fingers looped into his jeans, the back pockets faded and worn. I examine him again, seeing that older version of Julian, one who knows more, has lived more, who has more to offer. This one has broader shoulders, a deeper voice, softer jeans, and kinder eyes.
When I step onto the island and smell the bird shit, when I hike across the rocky land to find the two houses, twin horror movies in an empty field, when I get into the shared room I will be staying in and the sound of the wind continues as if there are no walls or windows, the room in which I will be sleeping the next twelve weeks, I realize it’s not a joke anymore, or even an obsession; there I am in my body, a surprise.