Today marks the 173rd year anniversary of the Pearl Incident, where 77 enslaved Black people escaped boarding a schooner called The Pearl in Washington DC at what we now know as the DC wharf (which is now gentrified, don’t get me started). Because of a horrible storm that hit and an inside informant they didn’t make it to the free state of New Jersey, their destination. This was the largest known escape in the US. This piece is a part of Notes From VEGA at the Nicholson Project @thenicholsonproject: a map representing their planned journey in the form of cornrows which were sometimes used as secretive maps during escapes. Notes From VEGA imagines a future where all those left behind on an uninhabitable Earth escape into the deep ocean communicating with ancestors and “future leapers,” the unborn and omniscient who speak to us now. “Ma left the fish to thaw before the planet began to freeze. Grandma gathered the sediment. The earth’s leaking has been going on for a hundred million years. Recycling isn’t perfect. A few dead things escape for a while and whispered secrets of a deep Black below.”