The other morning I stood with a group of developers, lawyers, real estate agents and urban planners on a boat sailing up the Miami River. The river is the first thing I show friends when I give them my tour of the city; the old fishing companies and bicycle-encrusted boats headed to Haiti conflict nicely with everyone's image of the sparkling city. The river is the birthplace of Miami, a place I've always thought is just waiting for its Steinbeck.
The theme of the tour was that the river is just waiting for developers. People took the microphone and talked about their plans for riverfront condos, shopping centers, restaurants as we passed pelicans perched on tilting motorboats. I hadn't seen so many pelicans in years, but I'd never seen the river from a boat. Nobody asked about rising seas. Why spoil the outing (when the rain was already trying to do that)? We sailed almost as far as Marlins Park, then turned around and headed back to port.
Out of the river, on our way back to Bayside, four dolphins swam in graceful arcs off our port side. They seemed absurd in an American downtown, and an affront to the developers on board. "Someday," I imagined them thinking, "all this will be ours."
