Tag Archives: virgin islands

Island Vignettes

I. Peregrinations

Climb aboard a plane. Shoot over a snow-dusted heartland, over the brain coral of the Appalachian hills and the long, aged spines of its mountains, over the Carolina coastal plain with its tidewater veins and then a long, sun-kissed expanse of ocean spackled by the shadows of clouds. I am off to St. Thomas again, hosted by Uncle Chuck and Aunt Monica at L’Esperance and joined by my mom and her partner and cousin David.

The actuarial tables of travel catch up with me again. Do it enough and things will go wrong, and this time, bad winds for landing cause a diversion to San Juan. Sun Country hotel vouchers are a fiasco and we wind up in a gated ground floor of a spare apartment in the city, a few blocks from a street shut off by police cars and a canine unit. It’s enough to sketch out most travelers.

A few ladies hold a casual party at the apartment next door, and it pulls at something deep within. I am eleven years old at a compound in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where a group of Minnesota college students study abroad and I am in the room next to the kitchen where I wake every morning to that same pitter-patter of Spanish chatter and laughter, those clattering dishes, those nourishing smells of baking food. Later, as a college student myself, I stumble down cobbled Mexican streets with an eclectic crew of kids from around the world, in search of a hostel and hear those same giggles, that same gentle teasing; later again they are reborn along the narrow lanes of an old Spanish city core. This easy soundtrack echoes through memory, puts me at peace. I am in good hands, perhaps only ever truly content as an object in motion.

II. Big Boats

From a perch at L’Esperance above the harbor, we watch the traffic come and go. Somewhere between one and five cruise ships visit Charlotte Amalie every day. They have grown in size over the years, disgorging ever more tourists, the islands left in a strange lurch of activity that settles down each evening. The long-term visitors go out for dinner and the locals party the night away. The carnivals of leisure cycle through, less the fresh joy of discovery in a European port of call and more of a drift through bars and shops that could, with some choice exceptions, be anywhere. Paradise, Incorporated.

On the Thursday of my week on St. Thomas, the USS Stockdale powers into port. This AEGIS destroyer has spent recent years guarding commerce on the Red Sea from Houthi rebels, though it recently joined the Caribbean buildup that accompanied the ouster of Venezuelan despot Nicolás Maduro. It sits in Crown Bay next to Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas, dwarfed by the pleasure cruise craft. The twin faces of empire, a reminder of the force that makes possible the leisure on St. Thomas, and the reason the U.S. collected these islands from the Danish during World War I. That treaty forsook an American claim to Greenland, and while I cannot comment on the relative value of any rare earth metals, I will say the beaches that treaty brought beneath the stars and stripes are much better than the alternative down the road not taken.

III. Billionaires

Laurance Rockefeller purchased most of St. John, the third-largest of the Virgins, in 1952. He later donated nearly all of his holdings for the creation of Virgin Islands National Park, and he developed a hotel on Caneel Bay on land leased from the National Park Service. The Caneel Bay Resort was a world-class gem design to be one with the coastline, an eco-conscious masterpiece that shunned technology and rightly revolved on one of the most beautiful stretches of sand in the world.

Hurricane Irma demolished the resort in 2017. Ever since it has been trapped in development hell, swiftly swallowed by fast-growing trees and gnarled vines just like St. John’s old slave plantations before. Myriad questions from the NPS lease to cleanup from 60s-era building materials loom over its future.

Jeffrey Epstein purchased Little St. James, an islet off Pillsbury Sound between St. Thomas and St. John, in 1998. For over 20 years it was the base of his most lurid operations, a steady procession of gilded elites and underage girls funneled through, his crimes an open secret among the islanders. In 2016, he added Great St. James to his collection.

Since Epstein’s death and disgrace, another billionaire, Stephen Deckoff, has purchased the islands from Epstein’s estate for $60 million. A proposed luxury hotel is trapped in development hell, unable to get off the ground despite its backer’s resources.

Some of the Virgin Islands’ billionaires aspire to preserve a natural and human heritage for posterity; some use its covers to hide the greatest depravities they can engineer. Others, like Deckoff, just try to profit from it, a money man doing what a money man does. But in the end, it seems the islands always win.

IV. Rituals

We enter the battle with the islands for a day of brush clearing on St. John, as we always do on Tuesdays here. Uncle Chuck is in his element with the Friends of the National Park, chatting botany and pointing out the monkey-no-climb he told fellow volunteers to spare several years back that has now shot up and become a healthy tree.

On this day we clear out the Reef Bay Great House, a sugar plantation relic now enveloped by a scourge known variously as coral vine and Mexican creeper. We hack back the jungle and restore some of its complex grandeur. Such as we can: a lintel along the portico now dangles in the breeze, its threat to pull down one side of the façade held only by a single strand of rebar. There is little chance of any stabilization from NPS, and a tragic fate for the Great House’s tragic legacy. But for now there is an easy satisfaction in passing on this privilege I enjoy, to cut out windows on to memory and beauty in a place where people come for joy and escape.

Later in the week, David and I return to St. John. We hike around Lind Point and up Caneel Hill, achieve commanding views of Cruz Bay and a descent to the ruins of Caneel and a splash into the ocean at Salomon Beach, a slice of white sand accessible only by trail or boat. Along the whole way the trail shows the fruits of the volunteer labor. A few cuts from catch-and-keep are a small price to pay, a little blood left to feed that lifeblood.

The other routines are less taxing: open up the villa, let in the breeze, wake to the sun’s long fingers creeping over the hill and in through the glass door to the balcony. Lay in sand and play in waves: Lindquist Bay, Hull Bay, a stroll down the streets of Charlotte Amalie. Make the circuit through the bars, order a Booty Call and get lei’d at Duffy’s, meet the same Minnesota waitress at two establishments, encounter the Islands’ finest purveyor of hose.

After long days on St. John we return to L’Esperance, where happy hour is a sacred rite. The sun plunges to the horizon and bathes Charlotte Amalie in a hazy sheen. The bell dings, the bottles pop open, ice tipped into glasses and drinks mixed. We set aside our books and our phones and hold forth: the day’s details, adventures past and future, the vagaries of island life. That happy hour bell is a call to drink, but it also breaks down that retreat into self, separates spaces for quiet and for community, both necessary in a well-rounded life. Pour me another, please, and again find that ease.

V. Inflection Points

My last time in the Virgin Islands my work life was in the process of blowing up as a regime change reoriented how things could be done. The previous time was deep in a pandemic. This time there are fewer lingering worries, easier roads to bliss.

It is thus to my great annoyance that I find myself facing writer’s block on the Hull Bay beach. I should be basking and letting my pen flow and yet the block nags, irks, makes one wonder if this is maybe too perfect or if I am just too easily knocked off my game. Things should flow naturally but they do not. I cannot absorb what the beach offers, assume that oneness that comes with the territory here. Distractions too easy, desires too fierce? Paralysis in the face of challenge? Nah. I just have to remember what the islands have already taught me.

I think back to my pandemic era escape here. I recognize now that it was a line in the canyon for me, a moment in which, when isolation anomie threatened to grind me down, I chose not to let it and instead struck outward. That journey put me on path toward being the world wanderer I long wanted to be, began infusing within me the self-assurance I always wished to have. In recent years I have looked at times for other lines in the canyon—a work life shift here, a memorable trip there; even that ultimate canyon line, a long-term relationship—and realized that all of those things, while attainable, are found somewhere along this rugged, sweaty, hunger-fueling hike on St. John. I embody the pursuit. Follow the path and the rest will come.

On that trip I read Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet. For reasons unclear to me I had previously thought I was not ready to read it. (These deep intuitions, I have learned, are things I should trust: even if they do not work out, I do not regret them, and they have delivered for me more than ever in the past year.) By that trip, I was indeed ready.

True it is I have climbed great hills and walked in remote places.

How could I have seen you save from a great height or great distance?

How can one be indeed near unless he be far?

At the end of The Prophet the poem’s namesake sails on from the city where he preached, on to the next adventure. I pick up a book on Byzantium and get ready for my next journey, too.

Virgins Revisited

Give me a beach, a little pocket of beach, alive with a congenial crowd but far from where the cruise ship tours dump their loads. Give it a white sand apron, a few reefs off the shore, some swells further out to tempt the surfers. Give it a little open-air bar or two, a place to grab a beer as the smell of barbecued meat wafts down to the water. A couple trees to hang a hammock, a gentle breeze to sway it; let me melt into the beach, suspended in paradise.

I write these lines in a hammock on Hull Bay on the north shore of St. Thomas, in the United States Virgin Islands. The world intervenes to befoul an attempted cousins week here, but cousin Rob and I join Uncle Chuck and Aunt Monica for a few days at L’Esperance. I have been to St. Thomas seven times now, and my last time here, an extended stay, gave me some lay of the land. I am now a capable left side of the road driver, comfortable running the one stoplight all the locals ignore and no longer in a state of terror shooting up Flag Hill on a one-lane, two-way road with no guardrail between the rental car and a dramatic plunge. I know the ins and outs of some of the beaches, and I almost know where to find the dishes in the L’Esperance kitchen. These islands have become my most regular destination outside of my usual Upper Midwest haunts.

The Virgin Islands are predictable in their unpredictability. This time, here with the villa’s owners, I get a sense of just how much work it takes to keep up L’Esperance in a place where island languor seems so very real. Refrigeration is a struggle, repairmen do not show; the invasive plants slither inward. The power cuts, the solar panels and battery walls pressed into service. A venture to the grocery store takes on an air of intrigue: just what will be in stock today? But every glance at the view is a reminder of why we do it.

Paradise comes with a price, as all fine things must. A spin through the center of the island drives home how much the territory remains a colonial outpost, an outside world dropped on to hilltops and beaches and the rest put to its service. The locals are agreeable but operate on their own timetables, by their own values. The continentals who have settled here bear a sun-weathered satisfaction, resigned to their fates as things move slowly and break and occasionally get wiped off the map by a hurricane, but content with where they are. The siren song of tropical bliss echoes across the hillsides, audible often enough to sustain an eternal dream. That lotus-eating life would leave me restless on a longer stay, but over a week I find just the right level of contentment here.

Neighboring St. John remains a garden of beauty, a reason I would return here even if I did not have L’Esperance in my life. On our first full day on the islands together, Rob and I ferry over and do part of the hike that most mesmerized me four years ago: Leinster Bay, Windy Hill, and up over the sharp ridge on the Johnny Horn Trail down to stellar barbecue and a beer at Johnny Lime in Coral Bay. The sweat pours out on the return march over the ridge, and we take the plunge at Maho Bay to rinse it all away. We are waylaid by goat herds in both directions on our hike, including a dozen lounging at the start of the climb up from Leinster Bay and a leisurely family chewing its way along the lower reaches of the Johnny Horn on the return journey. New meaning for running on island time.

On a second visit to St. John we fill a 14-passenger van with people who think getting scratched up by catch-and-keep while sweating in the tropical sun is fun. Our crew has signed up to clear out the ever-advancing tropical brush on the Bourdeaux Mountain Trail, a path running from the island’s high point to the sea down the hotter, drier south side of the island. Frank, a sharp kid from Colorado and a volunteer coordinator with the Friends of the Virgin Islands National Park, appreciates the weirdness necessary to aspire to such action, and we hack away to free future hikers from encroaching thorns. Rob and I chat up some younger women who have traveled here together, spending a week in a camp at Cinnamon Bay to follow Frank’s commands. The talk fixates on adventures past and future and Rob notes our shared masochism, this pursuit of sweat and exertion to uncover new paths under the tropical sun.

Trail work is my only labor during my time in the islands, and I otherwise succumb to island routines. I burn my skin, apply the aloe, rinse in the pool. The happy hour bell dings and we assemble in the great room for cocktails or wine as the sun plunges into the horizon beyond the Charlotte Amalie harbor. We alternate eating in and venturing out to some restaurants that deliver the goods: Mims, Oceana, Cuvee, with special credit to those who offer elevated cuisine and good wine in a place at the end of the supply chain. Conversation winds down and we turn to books or word games or a few rounds of Rummikub. Stay up late, sleep in a spell, use the exercise room or swim some laps to avoid total sloth. I get some time to think, to write out some stray lines, to ponder how best to meld passions and realities.

On my final full day I head to Hull Bay a second time. Through some great failing I have left my writing tablet back in Minnesota and so I am consigned to pen and paper, allow my thoughts to drift in slowly like the bay’s gently lapping waves. I return to past writings and mantras, write them anew, wonder if I can distill them into some sort of credo or code for moving through the world. I feel like I am circling a destination on a windy island road, sometimes driving on the wrong side but nevertheless getting closer, ever closer.

Over lunch at the bar, unenthused by the prospect of talk with my neighbors who have taken one-way tickets to Margaritaville, I find myself on the Wikipedia page for Isaiah Berlin’s hedgehog and fox analogy. I am of course a full-on fox, fascinated by many things and a skeptic of simple theories, content to hold a whole heap of complex thoughts within me and marvel at all of it, even the pickled retirees of Hull Bay. I can, through words, continue to pull things together. In due time. For now I finish my beer, pull my cap into place, tug off my shirt, appreciate the progress my gym time has coaxed out, and reassume my pose as a boy on a beach.

In the Shadow of Disaster

The two places I have spent the most time outside of the mainland United States are the U.S. Virgin Islands and Mexico City. Between Hurricane Irma and the earthquake that struck Mexico, it has been a dark past few weeks for two places with a special fondness in my heart. No one I know was hurt or has suffered damages they don’t have the means to repair, but it is jarring nonetheless, especially from a powerless distance.

I first went to the Virgin Islands as a nine-year-old, and as that was my first venture out of the Midwest, the islands always loomed large in the mind of a kid plagued with wanderlust. Most of my return journeys date to my college and grad school years, when I could enjoy a lot of sun and rum and enjoy some rare moments to completely unwind. The natural beauty was stunning, the colonial architecture of Charlotte Amalie had its charms, and thanks to the generosity of others, I could live like a king for a short while.

As the trips went on, I became more aware of the islands’ social reality. Aside from the beaches, the Virgin Islands are one of those forgotten relics of America’s colonial phase, perpetually broke and flailing about. When I went back there shortly after I finished my semester-long stint in Mexico as an undergrad, large parts of it struck me as more like Mexico than anything American. These people will live without power for several months as they struggle to clear brush from the precarious roads clinging to hillsides, and have heaps of junk to clear and little place to put it. My experiences in trail maintenance in the Virgin Islands National Park on St. John assure me that the hillsides, stripped bare by Irma, will return to their past verdant selves in little time. Less safe are the towering flamboyant trees, the roadside barbecue stand in Cruz Bay, Duffy’s Love Shack, and the homes so many of the island’s poverty-stricken permanent residents, who won’t even have many tourists to sell to in the coming months. There will be much work to do.

Thanks to a cleaner flow of information from Mexico City’s diverse media environment, I’ve had a more intimate portrait of the damage in the city I called home for a semester during my junior year of college, and had visited twice before. Over the past week, I’ve spent some time every day reading up on accounts of the recovery efforts in Mexico City, or CDMX, as we seem to abbreviate it these days. Some of the pictures are especially striking: signs demanding silence as rescuers listen for signs of life beneath the rubble, Paseo de la Reforma converted into a pedestrian highway as the city comes to a halt, people of all classes consoling each other in the streets.

Earthquakes loom over CDMX, and a catastrophic 1985 quake still haunts those old enough to remember it. The university I attended had its previous campus demolished by an earlier tremor; while the new one was well-built and up in the mountains on solid ground, it was hard not to take stock of the evacuation directions posted next to the door of every classroom. (If you’re stuck in a building, I learned, the safest place to be is standing in the door frame.) Nothing major hit during my time there, but I did feel a slight tremor one day, a low-scale quake accentuated by the fact that I was walking across a less-than-stable pedestrian bridge at the time. The unstable soil just adds to that sense that CDMX is a city on the edge of every churning force in that nation, all of life and the risk of death all wrapped up in one manic burst of semi-ordered chaos.

Earthquakes are a particular risk in Mexico City since much of the center of the metropolis sits on the unstable bed of Lake Texcoco, which the Spaniards drained after their conquest of the Valley of Mexico. The building I lived in would have been a beachfront condo in Aztec days, barely on solid ground. Polanco, the ritzy district I’d wander over to on lazy weekend afternoons, was on the lakebed, but on somewhat more stable ground than the city center and built to a high enough code that it suffered little damage. Less fortunate was La Condesa, the hip district of nightlife and young people where a number of my fellow students from abroad made their temporary homes. Here, numerous apartments toppled, as they did in neighboring Roma Norte. The Parque España, once home to late-night dalliances amid the bushes, was reborn as a temporary aid station. And no collapse gripped national attention quite like the damage to the Enrique Rébsamen school, where at least 20 bodies have been pulled from the rubble.

We are still learning the scope of the damage further south, where towns tucked away in the mountains of Morelos, Puebla, the State of Mexico, Oaxaca, and Guerrerro live in a different world from the well-connected capital. Some of these towns to the south suffered damage in a separate quake just a week and a half earlier, and the long, slow process of digging them out may take much longer. A family friend in Cuernavaca, over a mountain range to the south of Mexico City, sent a message detailing his family’s nonstop efforts to help those they can, bringing meals to the newly homeless and collecting goods for an eventual journey using his larger vehicle out to the outlying villages in need of help.

cuernavaca

Youthful heroism, as captured by a family friend in Cuernavaca. Photo credit: Gerardo Debbink.

The rescue and recovery efforts bring our some of the most heartening displays of human solidarity. Brigades of people (many of them young) poured out all their energy as volunteers, swiftly organizing into rescue operations and digging into collapsed buildings, even amid the terror of potential aftershocks. This quake had the eerie coincidence of hitting on the 32nd anniversary of the disastrous 1985 quake, and while the young people have no memory of that disaster, they seemed to know what to do. Even social media, which deserves so much of the negative press it’s received recently, has emerged as an essential method for coordinating a rapid response to the crisis. The unity and upsurge in Mexican national pride has been a sight to behold, even from afar.

The 85 quake was a seminal moment in Mexican history, not only for the disaster it brought but also as the catalyst for the formation of a genuine civil society. People recognized the rottenness of their government, responded immediately to create some good, and the energy that emerged from that outburst of civic activity played no small part in spurring along Mexico’s democratization in the 1990s. Now, 32 years later, that dream has soured: the opposition parties have lost their sheen, and the longtime ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is nearing the end of a return turn to power that was just as corrupt and sad as in its late authoritarian days. In an Economista column today, Rubén Aguilar Valenzuela, the ex-Jesuit/leftist revolutionary/spokesman for a conservative president from whom I took a class in Mexico, looked at the upsurge with hope: perhaps a new generation will now find the power to take control of its own destiny.

“Why does this only happen in these circumstances, and not in others?” Aguilar asks of the outpouring of civic unity and genuine heroism. “What needs to happen for us to express this capacity in everyday life?” Questions worth asking anywhere, whether in Mexico or in the hurricane-ravaged southern United States, or even in a corner of Minnesota where we have little capacity to comprehend the destructive power that both nature and humanity have the power to inflict. In a better world, it wouldn’t take a crisis to spur people to recognize the immediacy of community, but we live in the world we have. With terror and sadness or just plain anomie looming in so many lives, the least we can do is take these moments and use them to remind ourselves of the goodness that can also exist within the human spirit. Hope can yet spring from the ruins.