The Lost Art of Forgetting

In the absence of absence, the present’s just an infinite past.

Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

“You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That’s where I want to finish out the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.”

— Stephen King, “Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption”

Every year, 100 endangered Hawaiian green sea turtles make the arduous open-ocean swim to spend weeks nesting on East Island, an 11-acre sand spit in the French Frigate Shoals, a coral atoll about 550 miles northwest of Honolulu. While there, the turtles mate, breed, and raise their young before returning home to spend their 70 years mostly basking under the tropical sun.

East Island is a prime paradise parcel, uninhabited yet incorporated into the U.S. State of Hawai’i. First surveyed by American scientists in 1923, the islet housed a 13-building U.S. Coast Guard radar station from 1944 until 1952. NOAA estimates 96% of all Honu nest in the immediate area, describing it as “the most important single islet for green sea turtle nesting”. Or, it was; East Island isn’t technically an island anymore. In October 2018, Hurricane Walaka submerged East Island.

Since the storm, the spit has maintained a precarious surface breach and even…