West End, Tortola
It's the sounds that gets ya in a place like this.
The crow of an invisible rooster somewhere on an opposite hill. The faint sound of a single hammer that is carried on the wind up the hill. The wind whooshing through the palms and scrub outside my window. The high pitched, insistent barking of a dog somewhere above me, concealed by the thick green canope. And, at night, the absolute silence.
I am completely alone up here, 500 feet above the ocean. The big house is quiet, the owner, a tall, dark haired Spaniard from Barcelona left Wednesday.
When I first arrived, I rounded the corner after a very steep climb and saw Spy Glass House written on the fence, and a man inside a small room, looking toward me.
"I'm looking for Sabor Caribe," I said, hot, tired, and terrified of the possibility, however remote, of the car sliding back down the 60 degree incline I'd just traversed.
"It's right down below." He stood up and walked toward the door. "I'll take you there. I've been waiting for you."
"I bought this place many years ago," he said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. "Almost lost it in my second divorce last year." Antonio talked as he helped me carry groceries down to my villa from the main house, a four bedroom, 9,000 square foot house with views to the south, east, and west.
" No more marriages for me."
Antonio went back to New York where he is a tech guy for the movie industry. He left me with a six pack of diet coke, the combination to the game room with internet access ( although he tried to hook me up down the hill--too much steel reinforced concrete for the router to navigate around ), carte blanche to use the pool in the main house.
Now, I'm here almost a week. This is the time when I've completed the first book, started editing my writing project on the Camino Santiago, found my way to RoadTown and picked up real groceries--all the start up stuff.
I don't like middles. And, I'm now about to move into one since I'm staying here three weeks. I've got "goals"--like edit the whole draft of Chapter 2, write four vignettes for my writing class, swim every day in the ocean. And some exploratory/ adventure "goals": find a scuba instructor who will patiently stay with me while I clear my ears on my way down to a 40-60 foot dive ( I had trouble doing that in Bonaire in 1986, and haven't tried since ); and take a round of sailing lessons mostly so that I can get out on the Sir Francis Drake Channel on a proper sailboat and handle the wheel for awhile--a real love of mine.
This is the time when I began to say to myself: WHAT WERE YOU THINKING COMING TO THIS ISLAND ALONE FOR THREE WEEKS. There's always that angst of going on my own. Will I meet people? Will I get bored? Will I be lonely? Will I be disappointed? Will I miss my own bed, Gregory greeting me when I come into my co-op, Ethan and my Grammie Time?
I've got a lead on a scuba guy who will take me on an open water dive. I've found a book store if I run out of books. I've found a great place, the Jolly Roger, right smack on the edge of the water--to watch the SuperBowl. There's a festival of agriculture next week on every one of the five main islands of the BVIs that I want to attend, celebrating the island's rather new understanding that feeding themselves from their own farms offers an avenue to reduce dependence on imports. And a regatta in West End the following week.
Joseph Campbell, the extraordinary scholar who transformed our understanding of the spiritual life was asked: " What do we do to avoid demonizing other cultures/ other ways of thinking and living?" " Tourism," he answered. "Go somewhere and meet somebody else."
" If we go somewhere," he added, " we should learn as much as we can about the place--the arts, the myths."
Now, that works better to settle me down than trying to "embrace my angst" which I find so much psycobabble. A mission. That's something I can embrace!
M.C.
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