Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Water?

Abstract

This ecocritical approach to Alvar Núnez Cabeza de Vaca begins with a squall line in the near distance and ends in the coastal lowlands of the Florida panhandle. The horse has ceased to reify the conquistador and has become a hindrance. Water, too much water, gales from the north colliding with warm water expanding, the shifty nature of the Canarreos shoals between Cuba and the Isle of Pines, the Gulf Stream, the rough seas of the Yucatan channel, all elements of the inconstant weather, idiosyncratic Caribbean weather that carried the unfortunate Narvaez expedition to the inhospitable Florida coast. A one-legged god sealed their fate, and his name is hurakan.