The darkest, stickiest, richest mud in the universe squeezes through our toes as thousands of fiddler crabs scatter from burrows, to obscure destinations, as we come ashore. Smoke from the wood fire of the fish camp carries the smell of roasting corn. As we approach, two young fishermen in front of the house give a shout of greeting to Capitão, another local fisherman who has agreed to take photographer José Frota and I through the mangroves and on up to Barra da Cunhaú in is motorized canoe. This is my second trip through the Canguaretama mangrove forest. The first trip was with visual artist and designer Karen Ramos (ateliekarenina.blogspot.com), who was researching traditional stories for costume design workshops, and my sons Nilo and Mário, who about flipped when a mullet jumped into the boat. Parts of the mangrove are still abundant with fish, despite the toxic dumping by local shrimp farms...

Canguaretama is a small town on the North East Coast of Brazil, and the home of one of the largest mangrove forests in Brazil. Through some fortuitous connections by my French ornithologist friend, François, I was able to hook up with Capitão who was happy to take me around the mangrove. What you see on the mangrove really depends on who you go with. This day we are out with Capitõ and Zé de Nia, who loves to eat.... and drink....but not in that order.

When we reach the porch of the 'abandoned' house, which has become a fish camp--place to store nets, equipment, hang out, roast corn, fish, crabs, drink cachaça, play cards, tell jokes, laugh--Zé de Nia quickly shucks three more ears of corn and puts them on the fire. And as it roasts, Norrison--a quirky, young fisherman in his 20's, in a red checkered bucket hat--told a myriad of stories, from the life of the soft shell crab to his sexual education, and his father's dramatic strategies for keeping him straight, which apparently he is ambivalent about, which is funny to the other fishermen, in an inclusive way. It's the best corn I have ever tasted. But this is just the beginning, by the time we return back to Canguaretama, we will have eaten fresh oysters we pull off the mangrove roots, mullet roasted over the fire at the fish camp, mullet in a bubbling sauce of chopped tomatoes, onions, cilantro, with a little coconut milk, palm oil and salt, and the most delicious pirão (coarse manioc flour mixed with the sauce the fish is cooking in) on earth at another fisherman, Lula's place. Zé de Nia, happily drinks three tall bottles of Skol.

When I ask about the shrimp farms, the thing that convinces me beyond any other argument, never to eat farmed shrimp again, is Capitão's description of the fiddler crabs reaction to the methanol that is wantonly thrown in the river by the shrimp farmers. "They come out of their burrows, and run, like this, then die. The only reason they don't cry is because they can't." It is the actual connection that is apparent, a true tenderness you can't imagine, of a man and his connection to the creatures that are part of his sustanance--that seems fabricated--but in the moment he said that, I got a glimpse of the weight of the destruction, for people who have lived harmoniously with their physical environment and the creatures in it for generations.

 Everything I have read theoretically about traditional cultures, was instantly manifest in those two sentences. I am suspicious of overly moral ,self-righteous stuff (right or left), but really, this was one trip that gave all those fair trade products a different spin. Shopping at Rainbow all those years in SF, it just becomes almost cliché, like a fashion statement--Fair trade, and the whole movement for the return to artisan food production ways, kind of hyper-utopian romantic ideal.

But those two sentences put it all into perspective--of course there should be a return to artisan food ways--and the Capitão wins the serious Mangroovy award in my book!