Letting go of the fight against nature is the simpler, more philosophical part of the paradigm shift,” writes environmental reporter Rosanna Xia in California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline, the July selection of the California Book Club. “Working with the rising sea, and bringing back missing pieces of the shore within an environment already so altered and serving so many people? That’s where things get messy.” The book, as you may have already discovered, is a series of beautiful reported essays on how communities up and down the California coastline are responding to rising seas.
The messiness of finding solutions after a ceasefire with nature becomes evident over the course of the book. It should be noted, of course, that some communities are invested in fighting the direction of nature by erecting ever-higher seawalls to hold back the ocean—the more sustainable path forward, managed retreat, has proved to be an incredibly fraught one. Revealing the emotional implications of managed retreat for many, one Pacifica man says, “‘Managed retreat’ is code word for give up—on our homes and the town itself.” Those of us not living on the coast can empathize with him in that moment, even if we believe that implementing expert-crafted policies to conserve the beaches we share is more important than any one piece of property.
But, as A.R. Siders, the climate-adaptation specialist at the Disaster Research Center in Delaware, asks, “What if we didn’t see retreat as defeat? What if we saw every decision to relocate as a brave advance?”
In Xia’s book, we also see communities that accept that in the future, the seas will rise further, overwhelming seawalls that might work now, and that erecting seawalls to protect property only leads to the destruction of the beaches in front of them, resulting in the need to build taller walls that prevent sand replenishment of the beaches. It seems that certain approaches, such as taking incremental steps toward teaching a community about the realities of sea rise, tend to avoid the emotional and political backlash that results from speaking too directly and baldly about managed retreat, with all the almost-primal fears that seems to raise. Still, figuring out which expert’s policies will work for a community remains messy.
Throughout, Xia’s book feels fully cognizant that the movement of sand in one place on the coastline affects beaches elsewhere. It’s never about a single piece of property. Concluding with the story of Marina, California, calling it the “rare seaside town where one-third of the community is low income and more than 60 percent are not white, [where] maintaining an open shoreline that can be enjoyed by all is an absolute priority,” her book leaves us hopeful. Solutions are being proposed, discussed, worked toward. It’s the balance and gracefulness in Xia’s telling of these communities’ different stories when faced with the potentially catastrophic problem of rising seas that allow us to get a sense of what might be holding us back from taking bigger steps now, and how we might better understand the interdependence of every place on the shore.
We’re delighted to welcome Xia’s editor for California Against the Sea, Marthine Satris, as the special guest to discuss the book with Xia and CBC host John Freeman on July 17. She is currently the associate publisher at Heyday, the nonprofit press in Berkeley focused on nonfiction, where she particularly emphasizes acquisitions of books that delve into California’s natural world and our relationship to it.
Satris studied Irish experimental poetry at UC Santa Barbara and received a PhD in English in 2012. Since graduate school, Satris has worked in independent publishing in the Bay Area. She is also a poet. One of her current projects can be read in the literary journal Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment. Xia partly attributes the poetic spirit of California Against the Sea to Satris’s editorial hand.
Thursday is bound to bring us a fascinating and important conversation about California’s iconic beaches and a superb work of nonfiction—don’t miss it!•
Join us on Thursday, July 17, at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Xia will sit down with CBC host Freeman and special guest Satris to discuss California Against the Sea. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
SEA CHANGE
Read CBC host John Freeman’s essay about California Against the Sea. —Alta
AMERICAN FAIRY TALE
Read critic Bethanne Patrick’s review of Meg Waite Clayton’s Typewriter Beach, which features Hollywood elements and is set in Carmel-by-the-Sea. —Alta
WRITER AND PAINTER
Read Terry McDonell on Dark Waters, Russell Chatham’s reissued collection of nonfiction. —Alta
WRITER’S ROOM
Read Alta Journal books editor Anita Felicelli’s profile of Caro De Robertis in connection with their oral history So Many Stars. —Alta
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