Editor’s Note

I remember changing into my wetsuit on the sidewalk in the twilight, watching lanky egrets stand statuesque in the Oneonta Slough, a winding offshoot of the Tijuana River that fronts the southern stretch of coastal Imperial Beach, California. The quiet of that predawn hour, coupled with the stillness of the marshland, gave the normally tedious act of climbing into neoprene an almost meditative quality

This was a ritual my friends and I repeated frequently, as we’d become deeply