• Tide and Current Taxi: 2021

On Tuesday I traveled to Sheepshead Bay with Simone Johnson, an artist, cultural worker, and organizer of the Blue Planet Free School.

We wanted to explore White Island, a small manmade island in the Marine Park Recreation Area.

This place probably used to be all salt marsh, but sand and garbage were added in the 1930s during the construction of the Belt Parkway.

“I feel like I’m always looking at places like this through binoculars,” said Simone.

So we took the opportunity to see each thing up close,

or as close as it would let us.

“Grass is pretty underrated,” said Simone.

We could see the way the mussels and the cordgrass help each other and hold the land in place, like small architectural miracles.

There was something across the channel that I wanted to check out, so we got back in the boat.

“It looks just like Graniteville Wetlands, which has a lot of old abandoned cars too,” said Simone,

and she told me about the ongoing, five-year fight to preserve the Graniteville Swamp in Staten Island from development. Simone grew up in St.George, Staten Island but is familiar with the area.

The area that we are in now was donated to the city by a wealthy philanthropist named Alfred Tredway White on the condition that it would never be developed. In fact, the island is named for him, White Island.

The wind had picked up so Simone walked back along the beach,

and I pulled the boat through the water.

I was having trouble explaining my feelings about preservation and development to Simone that day. I told her that I would think about it more and write it when I made my post. Now the thought seems simple: I am grateful to Alfred Tredway White for donating this land,

but he never should have owned it.

Simone and I recorded an Instagram live conversation when we were out on the island that you can see here!