BRINE FLIES AND BEACHGOERS — SHANNA YETMAN

Antelope Island
Utah
August 2021 

“Pray for rain,” the governor pleads during his latest press conference. This is a ridiculous notion and we won’t listen.  Instead, we’ll go to the beach to see the Great Salt Lake. This is our ridiculous notion. We put on our swimsuits, pack up our flip-flops, and soon we are on that seven-mile causeway that leads us into Antelope Island.  The boats are dry-docked and peppered in between them are huge salt chunks. A blue heron flies overhead. 
           We smell sulfur. We breathe in dust laced with arsenic and mercury. 
           You make sense of this drought by talking about surface areas and lake depths. These are numbers I can’t get my head around. It’s not hard to see what you’re saying. The lake is shrinking. 
           You say, it's usually 1700 square miles and now it's 950. 
           I say, look outside. The shores are vast and the lake is quiet except for the water lapping and evaporating.  We drive further onto the island in search of those famously imported bison. Nothing. The sun sears us, even through the windshield. We park near a sign with a beach umbrella.  This is Bridger Bay near Buffalo Point. 
           I slather on sunscreen. It’s apocalyptic out there and I don’t want to burn. 
           We walk. We take our shoes off by a puzzle of rocks meant to be a maze and solve through this. We trudge across the sand. A doll head with pink hair and one glass eye stares at us. I get the sinking feeling we should all be underwater. You tell me about that mass extinction that ended with all those sea monsters choking on air.  You know, you say to me, the one where all the shallow seas dried up? It was too hot then, too.  
           We avoid the dried-out buffalo chips and make it to the water’s edge. Here, we are greeted by waves of sorts. There’s a long black blanket snaking along the shoreline, moving—no, matching—our every step. It’s funny. I move and you move and hundreds of brine flies shuffle across the sand. They bite us, herding us to match their movements. 
           They lead us in a dance. 
           Foot forward, the sand is clear. Foot back, the sand is covered by their bodies. We step again and again and soon we are stomping our feet rhythmically on the ground, our arms and torsos forward, then up, and forward again. The flies buzz to the drumbeat of water hitting the shore.  
           The wind whips up and I punch it once, twice, left, right. We rock our bodies and move in circles guided by the insects. 
           We chant.
           A ya yea ya. 
           A yea ya ya. 
           There’s a brush of lightning in the distance. The electricity puts our hair on edge.
           We twirl deliciously together.
           Next comes the thunder. 
           A dark cloud appears over the lake. 
           We dance until the sky lets loose and luscious rain thrums on our heads.

---

Shanna Yetman is an environmental writer and Latina living in Chicago. Her fiction has most recently appeared online in MoonPark Review and the Daily Drunk.  Her micro "Climate Migrants" was longlisted and appeared in Reflex Fiction's Winter 2020 competition. Her story, The Miracle Is to Walk this Earth, was the winner of the New Millennium Writings 39th Competition for flash fiction. Shanna is a 2014 recipient of Chicago's Individual Artist Grant Program sponsored by DCASE (Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events).  She has studied under Rebecca Makkai, Maud Casey, Howard Norman, and Claire Vaye Watkins.