The link between climate change and hurricane frequency has not been firmly established by scientists, but rising seas and scorching heat seem to worsen the damage the storms incur. Standing on the observation post, looking at the miles of flat, shallow marshes, I can’t help but think how little stands between Yankeetown and disaster.

“With Hermine, quite a few people here lost their houses,” Gardner recalls. And Hermine was a Category 1 storm. With a bigger and more destructive hurricane—like Harvey (Category 4) or Irma (Category 5)—the damage in Levy County could be catastrophic. “We’d be more or less flattened,” Gardner says.

A native of California, Gardner used to create digital content for colleges and textbook companies. A few years ago, he moved down to Yankeetown with his wife to care for his mother-in-law. Now he spends his time capturing footage for what he calls a “virtual preserve”—an interactive web site that will allow users to navigate through imagery of the area and click on icons to learn about native flora and fauna. In that way, the digital ghost of Yankeetown will survive long after the tides wash it away.

Gardner hefts his tripod and camera and leads me out to a nearby stream. In the sand, fiddler crabs are busy digging thousands of holes, depositing the leftover dirt into small piles. The ground seethes; it is alive.

Standing on the observation post, looking at the miles of flat marshes, I can’t help but think how little stands between Yankeetown and disaster.

While we walk, I mention the Cycle Theory I’ve been hearing from other residents of Levy County—the palpable fear of government regulation and federal intervention, the fact that this hugely vulnerable region is, in so many ways, resistant to the only type of intervention that might ultimately save it. Gardner nods. Climate change doesn’t come up that much in conversation here. “What’s disheartening is a lot of these folks are investing in a party, in politicians, that if anything are going to make their lives worse,” he says. “They’re voting against their own interests.”

And so Gardner focuses on his volunteer work, on the preservation of this little undeveloped parcel of wetlands along the coast. You can’t change everyone’s minds, so you do what you can, for as long as you can do it, and hope you made a difference. In the meantime, Donald Trump and Rick Scott and all the other climate deniers in the Republican Party will continue to make things as easy as possible for America’s big polluters and developers, hastening the storm to come. And when it arrives, it will descend first, and most brutally, on the residents of Yankeetown and all the other “red-red” counties across the South who have placed their faith in the president.

After saying goodbye to Gardner, I climb in my car and drive back along the sinuous dirt track, toward the paved road that bisects Yankeetown. Near the gates of the preserve, I spot a sign that was invisible to me on my way in. Its tone is plaintive, pleading: please tell your friends.