Here is an excerpt from a book in the works: Who Hears the Sound of the Last Wave? Enjoy–H

Ships Log: February 19, 2012, 08:15—Eleven-Mile Beach, Barbuda

I step out of the dinghy just past the surf and pink sand swallows my foot to the calf. The next wave knocks the inflatable forward, shoves me awkwardly onto my knees, then hands. The beach dusts me, when I fall face-to-face with the cushy ground, in sparkling rosy sugar too fine to brush from moist skin. The bizarrely squashy, cozy-warm, unsoiled sand is a tactile thrill.

It’s no wonder the island of Barbuda—a bump of coral limestone whose total land area is about half the size of Disney World—mined and sold more than nine-hundred-thousand tons of sand these past four years. With little-to-no other industry, the cash-strapped population of just over sixteen-hundred people ignored studies portraying the sand mining operation as a major threat to residents’ health and safety, sold the earth from under its feet, and collected millions of dollars in mining fees. The community is now accustomed to the tax revenues and government leaders struggle to end the practice, stop the flow of money.

The mining operations extend past the area deemed safe for extraction by an additional one-hundred-three acres. Heavy equipment sits atop the last ridge of Palmetto Point, the final barrier protecting the island’s only town, Codrington Village, from the relentless ocean. Researchers predict a category four or five hurricane will breach the remaining sand bar, flood the village, and cost lives. After that devastation, new patterns of changeable currents, sand deposits, and random erosion will materialize. It is difficult to calculate if the island, which rises a skimpy one-hundred-twenty-five feet above sea level at its highest point, will remain habitable after such destruction.

The Buddha called this type of consumption, “eating your children.”