Low Tide Sounds

This column doesn’t pretend to teach anything today. It doesn’t even aim to denounce or highlight anything in particular

Ilustración de Sebastián del Mar

They say the sea knows how to be silent. And it’s not the poets or marine biologists who say this, but the old fishermen—the ones who sit on upside-down buckets waiting for the moon to do its part.

These days—when the tourists have turned down the volume, the beach vendors have more shade than clients, and the breeze seems to slow down—I’ve noticed something I can’t quite explain.

It’s not silence. It’s a kind of muted environment. As if this coastal town we live in is taking a long, deep breath before summer arrives.

In La Paz, the low season has a rhythm of its own. The waves are quieter, the streets more empty, the stray dogs more relaxed. Even the news seems to arrive with more space between the lines. You get time to really look.

A couple of days ago, I went to El Tecolote. Not for an article or for some influencer pose, but to remember what that place used to be before it was filled with other people’s music and plastic tents.

I ran into a fisherman I hadn’t seen in years. He said something that stuck with me:—“Low tide shows what was always there… but we didn’t want to see.”

And yes, that happens with cities too.

In these quieter days I’ve seen things that usually go unnoticed: the trash the sea spits back, the pelicans sharing rocks with glass bottles, the tired faces of tourism workers barely making it to payday.

But I’ve also seen beautiful things: a kid playing with a piece of rope like it was treasure, a woman teaching her granddaughter how to make tortillas over a wood fire, young people rehearsing theater on the sidewalk.

Baja has a way of showing its unfiltered self when the world’s attention is elsewhere. And maybe that’s its most authentic moment. When the heat hasn’t yet crushed us, when the calendar isn’t full of festivals, when the politicians aren’t campaigning, when there are no drones, no promises, no hashtags.

This column doesn’t pretend to teach anything today. It doesn’t even aim to denounce or highlight anything in particular. It’s just a postcard, written with salty ink, of what happens when the tide goes out—both in the ocean and in the collective mood.

And maybe that’s a kind of resistance too: to keep watching, to keep listening to what Baja California Sur’s silence has to say.

— Sebastián del Mar