Date

16 August 2024 18:53:42

Location

The rocks of Zaraće, village of Gdinj, island Hvar

Country or Territory

Croatia

Name

Sasha Engelmann

Satellite

NOAA-15

Radio Callsign

M6IOR

A school of tiny black fish swirled around the rocks, and island swallows swooped and dived for insects above. I sat on a rocky perch at the edge of the sea, under the fisherman’s chapel, where someone had left a bouquet of olive branches, Tradescantia pallida, yellow cow parsley and long grass. A fisherman walked past me on the rocks and I suspected I had taken his usual spot, but he didn’t ask me to move, and he climbed on further, somewhat awkwardly navigating the steep Karst with its jagged edges and slant into the sea. I meditated on the deep time histories of Hvar - how my memories of Zaraće were so bound up with every edge of these rocks, and how far back in time they had emerged from the ocean floor, pushed up by tectonic and geomorphic processes. As I faintly recorded NOAA-15 at only thirty degrees to the east, the tide was coming in, and by the time I packed up, the sea was waking up the limpets and sleeping snails where my feet had been.

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