We entered the only pass into Manihi on a clear day with casual sailing winds coming over the land and across the lagoon. The entrance to the atoll, barely the width of an avenue, welcomed us with an incoming tide. The water that carried us was a moving glass, magnifying and distorting the white coral formations below, a funhouse mirror melted and flowing into the strange ring of land. Wild, carnival colored fish, clearly visible below the warped surface, passed on other-worldly errands, inattentive to our arrival. This was the first land that had been sighted in a few weeks, and all of us were excited to explore. But nearing the much awaited firm earth we were settled upon by an uneasy feeling, an uncanny stillness, maybe just the normal stillness of land, or a faint and unsettling smell, maybe just the ever present but unnoticed effluvium of loam and root and human dwelling not present at sea.