I was on Padre Island a few months ago just up the beach from Corpus Christi. I was there a year or two before the Covid pandemic and since then the island’s shore has acquired one cookie-cutter, residential development after another. It’s none of my business but in a helpless, detached way it was disappointing. There were, what seemed like, thousands of new, gray or white units stacked and staggered, wall to wall for a couple of hundred meters down to the beach and then a quarter mile stretch of sand and brush between it and the next gated community.
All it will take is a ten foot storm surge and Category 3 or 4 winds to reduce those resort homes to rubbish. Somebody, lots of someones will be left holding the bag but not the developers who will have made their money and moved on. But again, it’s not my business. I had believed most of that shoreline was part of a wildlife preserve but evidently not.
Mustang Island State Park is on the island near the causeway that comes over from the mainland (Corpus Christi). It’s an easy walk from the blacktop parking lot to the beach so I walked barefoot down to water’s edge. With sandals high and dry on a table top I went out ankle deep in the outgoing flow only to be pushed back by an over the knee surge from the next incoming. I’ve been walking beaches like these for lots of years and I never take one for granted. Unlike beach front condos up on the highway, very little has changed here since people first started digging clams on Padre Island. A wave’s crest collapses on itself and runs up the sand until it looses its energy. Then in rapid retreat it slips back out into the Gulf under the next incoming wave.
Shore birds scurry around just above the swash action, searching for morsels from a crab or clam that has finished its race and is decomposing back into the food web. The birds have the next wave timed and harvest bits and shreds until the next flush runs them up the hill ahead of it. Nothing is wasted in nature.
I cannot fault the money makers or their schemes. People want to live in harm’s way without any consequence. It’s what they do. It’s funny how we can share the same DNA but in another important way, be so opposite. Thats where I have more in common with the birds on the beach than my human counterparts who plant palm trees where wild sea oats should be and believe the Category 4 storms will turn away at the last minute, at least while they own the property.
I spent six years as an environmental issues resource teacher at a middle school in the early 1990’s. We were getting tons of good research data on global warming, plastic in the waste stream and over population but nobody believed any of it. My brother, a biology major turned professional pilot told me the sky is too big for us to f*#k it up and the ocean too; said it was a liberal hoax. The world had just turned over the 5 billion people mark on the world popu-meter. Now the needle is pressing against 8 billion people and they all need a next meal and fresh water. The only best solution is to have a lucrative income and live in a rich, powerful nation; and it helps if you are white. My guess is those new residents and time share holders on Padre Island are white and don’t have to ask, “How much does it cost?” The beach at the State Park doesn’t have any palm trees but I like it.
All it will take is a ten foot storm surge and Category 3 or 4 winds to reduce those resort homes to rubbish. Somebody, lots of someones will be left holding the bag but not the developers who will have made their money and moved on. But again, it’s not my business. I had believed most of that shoreline was part of a wildlife preserve but evidently not.
Mustang Island State Park is on the island near the causeway that comes over from the mainland (Corpus Christi). It’s an easy walk from the blacktop parking lot to the beach so I walked barefoot down to water’s edge. With sandals high and dry on a table top I went out ankle deep in the outgoing flow only to be pushed back by an over the knee surge from the next incoming. I’ve been walking beaches like these for lots of years and I never take one for granted. Unlike beach front condos up on the highway, very little has changed here since people first started digging clams on Padre Island. A wave’s crest collapses on itself and runs up the sand until it looses its energy. Then in rapid retreat it slips back out into the Gulf under the next incoming wave.
Shore birds scurry around just above the swash action, searching for morsels from a crab or clam that has finished its race and is decomposing back into the food web. The birds have the next wave timed and harvest bits and shreds until the next flush runs them up the hill ahead of it. Nothing is wasted in nature.
I cannot fault the money makers or their schemes. People want to live in harm’s way without any consequence. It’s what they do. It’s funny how we can share the same DNA but in another important way, be so opposite. Thats where I have more in common with the birds on the beach than my human counterparts who plant palm trees where wild sea oats should be and believe the Category 4 storms will turn away at the last minute, at least while they own the property.
I spent six years as an environmental issues resource teacher at a middle school in the early 1990’s. We were getting tons of good research data on global warming, plastic in the waste stream and over population but nobody believed any of it. My brother, a biology major turned professional pilot told me the sky is too big for us to f*#k it up and the ocean too; said it was a liberal hoax. The world had just turned over the 5 billion people mark on the world popu-meter. Now the needle is pressing against 8 billion people and they all need a next meal and fresh water. The only best solution is to have a lucrative income and live in a rich, powerful nation; and it helps if you are white. My guess is those new residents and time share holders on Padre Island are white and don’t have to ask, “How much does it cost?” The beach at the State Park doesn’t have any palm trees but I like it.
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