My Tacoma would be safe next to his chicken coop until we returned, whenever that might be. Vincent leaned against the hood of his Jeep and said it was better us than him no way he was getting in that water. A swollen cow pie swayed in the brown water next to our kayaks. Tom Fowlks, my partner in crime, was there waiting in his baseball cap and sun shirt. We crossed a narrow bridge on 16th Avenue, which ran south from the city of Lemoore, and parked at a high spot, just before the pavement dipped into the drink. “Damn, I hadn’t seen this,” he said with quiet awe as we gazed upon acres of flooded pistachio trees. Our shuttle driver, Vincent Ruiz-a 360-pound trucker, originally from Guadalajara, who owned a 13-acre farm a few blocks from the flood zone-steered around a ROAD CLOSED sign without a care. Trespassing rules would be strictly enforced. As for the Kings County sheriff, during media interviews he had informed would-be gawkers that the lake bottom-a vast depression at the southern end of the nation’s breadbasket-was private property. County health authorities had warned the public to stay out of the contaminated water, an unwholesome brew of pesticides and animal waste.

It was a Saturday, two days before Memorial Day. The sun had risen above the asthmatic haze of California’s San Joaquin Valley, and the disaster tourists would soon be arriving at the edge of Tulare Lake to take their selfies.

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