Only in Texas and... An Announcement

If you didn't know how smart pigs are, check this out. I've always been fond of pigs myself.



And the announcement is: On Saturday, August the 11th I'll be a guest over at Arlee Bird's blog Wrote by Rote. I hope you'll stop by, as I'll be sharing a memory about an old man and an old cat.

Happy - Part Seven

To his dying day our dog Happy barked at every somebody he didn't know and joyfully welcomed those he did. He growled when we had to picked ticks off his paws, growled if we got too near his food bowl. He did his cha-cha and begged for food scraps. He rolled in smelly, stinky stuff, growled when he got a bath and delighted in getting toweled dry. He pulled burrs from our socks, caught rats and mongooses and leapt from the jeep as often as he could.

He was predictable with his morning and evening routine, making sure we were all up and awake before taking his morning constitutional; making sure we were all home at the end of the day before he did it again and before he ate. And every night he did bed checks.

He would have given his life to protect us.

The tropics are hard on dogs, though not so much now because we have heartworm preventative and meds for parasites and skin problems. But back then dogs didn't usually live much past 8 or 9 years. So we were honored to have our ornery beast around for 12.

But all good things must come to an end. I would like to say he died peacefully in his sleep, but it it was not to be. One morning while on his constitutional he was struck by a motorcyclist who roared off without stopping. Happy walked down our driveway and went to his chain. He lay down, placing himself off duty for the last time and never got up again. He was paralyzed from his neck down. We had no choice. He growled when Dad picked him up to put him in the car and he growled when the vet put the needle in his vein.

He was Himself to the very last, our lovable Ornery Beast, Happy.

I know, without a doubt, he is to this very day running through the tall grass of the Elysian Fields, chasing and catching mongooses, and rolling in smelly, stinky stuff without the concern of getting a bath. He is growling just because he can, snapping out Shakespearian insults like, "You mangled weather-bitten wagtail!" Best of all he is sleeping in the sun with his pal Kitty Puss.

There they are; a plain honey colored brown dog with a funny short tail and a black and white cat. Can you see them? They are walking into a glorious sunset without a care. They are waiting for us to join them.

Happy - Part Six

Happy the dog had several things he loved, besides us of course.

He loved my cat, Kitty Puss. (You can read about the fabulous KP and see pictures of him too!) When we brought Kitty Puss home Happy claimed him by licking him until he was literally sopping wet. He carried the cat around by the head. I mean Kitty Puss's entire head was inside Happy's mouth....They often slept together. After KP died Happy never let himself get close to another cat. He tolerated others we had, but for the most part he ignored them.

Happy hated (oops this is supposed to be about things he loved...be patient) burrs. If he noticed burrs on our socks or pant legs he'd lie at our feet and patiently pull them off. He'd pull off a burr and shake his head to fling it away. The only problem in pulling off burrs is that it made his mouth water which meant wet socks. He loved pulling off burrs.

He absolutely loved to roll in smelly, stinky stuff.

He loved to sleep in the sun. He fall asleep sitting or standing up. Here are the pictures to prove it.
At about a year old.

At ten or eleven. Notice he is on his chain. Which meant he was off duty. Sometimes, particularly when he got older, he would go lie down by his chain and place himself off duty.

He loved to leap. He probably inherited his leaping abilities from his father, who as I mentioned earlier, could, without taking a running start, leap from the ground straight into the back of a dump truck (not a pick-up truck, a dump truck.)

Happy was quite the hunter and loved to catch rats and mongooses.

This leads into his greatest love of all, riding in the jeep. All we'd have to say is, "Jeep?" and he'd start to prance and dance and get all excited and leap into the jeep. He would drape himself across whoever was sitting in the front passenger seat, hind feet in the space between the seats, head and a goodly portion of his front half stretched outside sniffing the wind, floppy ears flapping, tongue lapping at the air. More than once he was able to combine his love of leaping, jeep riding and catching mongooses. More than once he launched himself from the lap he was draped across, flew through the air and caught a mongoose on the fly. No joke, it's true! Granted in those days we went between 15 or 20 MPH rarely doing more than 25, but still, he loved to leap from the moving jeep.

In time we all learned the "feel" of him when he was about to leap out of the jeep, something that happened so fast it was near impossible to stop it. His body would get tense, his hind legs becoming tightly coiled springs, his front paws pressed against either the side of the seat or the side of the jeep and POOF, he'd be flying through the air. It would have been dangerous to him if we had tried to stop his momentum, so we just let him go. Our task was to protect ourselves from his iron clawed paws that would dig into our legs as he sprang out into the air.

He was a flying dog. "Who needs wings when I can leap great distances in a single bound?"

Happy - Part Five

Happy the Dog played games of his own invention.

He was not a fetcher. If we threw something he'd go get it but getting it away from him was the challenge. He would growl fiercely if you tried to take something out of his mouth, all the while his tail spinning madly in a circle. Playing keep away or tug of war was something he took great delight in. "You want the ball? Just try and get it from me! I dare you!"

He also liked to grab hold of something like a towel and be spun around, all four paws off the ground. He had jaws like a bear trap. It was a game Dad usually played with him because at 45 pounds he was a little heavy for me.

He was just tall (short?) enough to walk under your knee when you were sitting. This was a cue that he wanted to be scratched at the base of his tail. When you did he'd do a kind of dance with his back feet while you scratched. We called it his cha-cha.

If we went, "Sic 'em Happy! Sssssic," he'd go charging out barking furiously. When he discovered there was nothing to bark at he would pretend he hadn't been fooled. He'd bark, bark, bark for a few minutes then he'd come back all "happy," tail wagging and say, "I chased off those somebodies I don't know. You're safe. Aren't you proud of me?" He loved chasing after non-existent threats.

But his favoritest game was when we went to the beach. Remember he detested water. He wouldn't have gone in even if fire breathing dragons were threatening his life. What he did was play tag. We'd be in the water say, up to our waists, and try to get onto the beach. His job was to prevent that from happening. He would pretend he couldn't see us by turning his head sideways as we tried to sneak out of the water. When we were in knee to ankle deep water Happy would charge at us barking madly at which point we turned tail and ran back into the sea with a great deal of splashing. Himself, of course, would come to a screeching halt right at the point where the waves lapped the sand and prance away before he got his paws wet. He could have played the game indefinitely. When we wanted to get out we had to tell him, "Okay Happy, game's over. Down with the iron claws," else he would leap and rake us and leave us with long whelps.

Here we are at the beach when I was about 15 and Happy was about 10. You can see his funny short tail. Perfect for grabbing hold of and preventing him from charging at a somebody he didn't know. The day this picture was taken the waves were big and I'd been body surfing. My hair is like really wild and tangled.

Happy - Part Four

Okay, so I've thoroughly convinced everyone that our dog Happy was a mean, crotchety, and ornery beast. He was that, but he also had other unique and endearing qualities.

Every morning he would check to make sure we were all awake before he would take his morning constitutional. He's sniff each of us, like he was making sure we hadn't been turned into somebodies he didn't know. Only when he was certain it was really us would he go for a walk, do his business, come back and eat. Did I tell you he would only eat unless we were all home? At night he went on rounds and checked our bedrooms to make sure we were all safe in our beds. I have no idea how often he made those nightly rounds. We never knew when he would show up, checking doors, checking beds. Sometimes he'd lie down by a door, like Cerberus at the Gates of Hades. Now whether he was keeping us in or keeping somebodies he didn't know out, is up for debate.

Because he was...shall we say...unpredictable, we trained him early on to do one of two things. We'd either tell him to go get tied up and we'd put him on his chain or tell him to go in the bathroom. Either way he knew he was off duty. Many somebodies he didn't know could have freely walked through the house and stolen everything and Happy, if he was one his chain, would have slept through it. If we knew somebodies he didn't know were going to be coming to the house, say for dinner, we usually put him in the bathroom and after an appropriate length of time we'd tell our guests we were letting the dog out. Instructions were given. "Just ignore him. Pretend he isn't there. Don't try to pat him. If he comes up and sniffs at you it's safe to put your hand out after which he'll treat you like a friend." And he would. He'd be fine, a perfect gentleman.

This leads into the oddest most remarkable thing about him. Say you came to our house everyday at the same time, stayed all day, and then left. Every day, upon your arrival, Happy would treat you as total and complete stranger, a somebody he didn't know. He would bark great warnings, have to be tied up or put in the bathroom and be reintroduced to you. Never failed, he would absolutely refuse to remember you. But if you spent just ONE night under our roof, well then, you were a member of the family and you would be treated as such. It wouldn't matter if you didn't see him again for a year, he would remember and welcome you home just like he welcomed us; with his funny short tail spinning in a circle, his head turned sideways like he was pretending he couldn't see you and then when you got to within a few feet, he'd leap at you in great delight saying things like, "Where the hell have you been! I've missed you! Did you bring me something to eat?"

Happy - Part Three

And we're back again with a few more Happy stories.

Among his other great dislikes, Happy hated having his paws messed with. It had not always been that way. Before a certain traumatic experience he had allowed us easy access to the places between his toes so we could pick off ticks. But afterwards he got very touchy. Again, if only one of us worked with him he tolerated our ministrations.

When it was time to check his paws I'd get down on the floor with him and the conversation would go something like this.

"Okay, Happy, I'm going to look for ticks." Because he already knew what was coming he'd growl. "Okay, Happy, I'm going to look at your paw." And while I inspected a paw he's raise a lip and growl some more. "Good boy." There's be more rumblings as each paw was inspected and the ever present ticks were removed.

What caused him to become touchy about his paws was this. It happened when he was a year or two old. We had moved from Gifft Hill to Caneel Bay. It must have been the week-end because I remember both Erva and I were home with Mom when Happy appeared at the kitchen door bleeding profusely from a front paw. And I mean profusely. He'd cut an artery because every time his heart beat there was a spurt of blood. Somehow he'd sliced open the bottom of his paw between the large back pad and his toes.

Of course we were all frantic and trying to help him and because there were three of us he was being most ornery about it and fighting us. Finally Mom shooed Erva and me away and she managed to wrap his foot up with clean rags that the two of us rushed around the house to find. But he would have nothing to do with the binding. Every time Mom got the blood to stop spurting and his foot bound up he'd rip off the bandages which of course caused him to start bleeding again.

It wasn't until he got weak from loss of blood that we were finally able to keep his foot bound. He got so weak he could barely raise a lip to growl. Even though he knew we were trying to help him he remained true to his personality. We nearly lost him. And no, there was no veterinarian near-by we could take him to. We were on our own. I think it was about three days before he could raise his head enough to eat something proper. He got pretty thin.

Somehow he survived and from that day on he was very touchy about his paws. Here we are with Himself on Christmas Day perhaps only 5 or 6 months after his near-death experience.

Other things he didn't like: Being carried, going on a boat, having his ears messed with. Now that I've thoroughly convinced you he was a mean, ornery cur, I will in future posts, relate stories of some of his better qualities.

Happy - Part two

He had a number of different names.

Happy-wappy-puppy-wuppy boy turned into Happity-wappity-puppity-wuppity boy. We also called him Iron Claws because he had this tendency to leap at us in joy. None of us were spared the occasional long red whelp where an iron clawed paw slid down an arm or leg. He was also referred to as Himself the Dog or just The Dog because he was so independent, bullheaded, stubborn, and sure of himself. Sometimes we called him The Beast or The Monster because he let us know in no uncertain terms when he didn't like something. I suppose we should have called him Grumpy Claws or Growleo or Snarl Jung or Grrrrronimo for all the fang-displaying snarling he did. At one point or another each of us got bit learning what his dislikes were and in the process learning how to handle him.

He absolutely did not like anyone messing with him while he was eating. I made the mistake of getting down on all fours next to him while he was digging in and got a scratch on my forehead from a lightening flash snap of fang accompanied by nasty growls. The odd thing is he would only eat when he knew we were all home. He also begged at the table. He'd put his head on a lap and look up most piteously with his pretty brown eyes. His eyebrows did that dog thing of moving around independently like they had threads attached to them and a puppet master was pulling on them. If he didn't get anything he'd move on to the next person. And he'd keep making the rounds until he did get something, which he usually did.


He absolutely hated water, except to drink. And this posed a problem because he absolutely loved to roll in wonderful smelling stuff like dead animals and soft cow patties which meant he had to get a bath. We learned if only one of us did the deed he would allow himself to be bathed with nothing more than a great deal growling protest as he stood there. If two of us tried to bath him he would get mean about it. I suppose he felt he was out numbered and that it wasn't fair. So he'd not only voice his protest he'd get lippy about it, show off his fangs and even snap. Removing his "eau de stink" was a fairly regular occurrence. You'd think he would have learned there were consequences to his rolling. But he never gave up perfuming himself and we never gave up bathing him. Hmmmm, maybe it was all a sadomasochistic ploy on his part because he absolutely LOVED being toweled dry.

Here he is at Gifft Hill with Mom and me about the time he fanged me. Mom is working on her rock garden. One of the 55 gallon drums contained kerosene for our refrigerator and lanterns, the other contained gasoline for the generator Dad installed so he could have his ham radio station. It also gave us a little extra light at night. One light bulb in the middle of each room. On Saturdays it ran the wringer washing machine so Mom could do laundry and the radio so Erva and I could listen to Story Hour with Aunt Nelly.

Happy - Part One

No two dogs are alike, even dogs of the same breed. And anyone who has had dogs usually has stories of at least one that was tail and ears above the rest; a dog that was special. Maybe the dog was particularly smart, or loyal, or adventuresome, or just plain cute.

In our family, Happy was such a dog. I've mentioned him a few times. Most recently in the adventure Erva and I had discovering and exploring The Ghut. He was such a unique and interesting dog he is a character in my MG novel, A Lizard's Tail. (No doubt he will turn up in other stories.)

I was the one, who at about 6 1/2 years old, was allowed picked him out of the litter, so I'm the one who can be blamed for our having such a growlsome, ornery, smart, and totally devoted dog. We pretty much agree he was born ornery because he was born with a broken rib. His mother was a small nondescript tailless mutt named Heidi. His father, on the other hand, was a big yellow cur with a great sweeping tail. He could leap straight from the ground into the bed of a dump truck. So Happy was big puppy and in the process of being born one of his ribs broke. For all of his life we could feel it under the skin at the back of his ribcage near the hip, a rounded, pointy piece of bone. I suppose if I had been born with a broken rib I'd be ornery too.

Happy was one of three pups. When we went to pick him out I wanted the honey colored one with the short tail. But he had hidden himself under the couch so he had to be dragged out from under it. We should have known from his response what kind of dog we were getting. He growled and nipped and was most uncooperative.

The question was asked, "Are you sure this is the one you want?" Oh yes, this was the one I wanted. So that's the one we got.

On the ride home to Gifft Hill Erva and I spread our skirts across the back seat of the jeep. We made a kind of hammock for him so he wouldn't slide through the open space between the seat and backrest. Immediately we started in trying out names.

Because his fur was fluffy (even though it was short) and didn't lie flat we thought of Bear. Names like Rover and Spike and who knows what all else were suggested. But he didn't respond to any of them.

At some point while petting and admiring him I said something like, "Are you happy?" and his funny little tail (that looked for all the world like someone had tried to cut it off and missed) wiggled and wagged. And I said, "That's it! His name is Happy."

So that's how we acquired an ornery dog and named him, Happy. And here we are together when he was four or five months old.

That's our jeep, The Yellow Dragon. The big wooden crate is what all of our "stuff," shipped from California, was packed it. Dad turned it into an "office" where he had his ham radio station and his tools. It looks like this picture could have been taken on a Saturday because Saturday was laundry day and blurry clothes can be seen hanging on the line to the rear left.

Stay tunes for few stories about Himself the Dog.

Remembrances of Gifft Hill - The Ghut - Part Three

Where had it gone?

Our rocky road had simply vanished. Happy, who was exploring ahead, came to the place where ghut met sky and hills, came to the place where the ghut ended. He stood there on one of many large boulders waiting for us. We hurried towards him as fast as we could, drawn to the mystery.

And then...as we climbed over a bunch of rocks we came face to face with a geological phenomena unique to St. John.

Dropping away at our feet, going straight down was a rock fall. I'm not sure how tall it is, Erva thinks maybe 75 feet. And there were the pools of water! The one at the top was maybe 15 feet long and 8 feet wide. And far below us, the pool at the bottom was MUCH bigger, 20 feet long maybe and 15 feet wide. The water, though brown in color was clear and sweet. Yes we drank some and were not harmed. And to our amazement things were living in it, and not just tadpoles. There were crayfish!

It was like being in a cathedral. Even we, two young girls, could recognize, sense, the specialness of the space. I don't remember our talking much. I think we mostly sat on the rocks and soaked up the essence of it all as our feet dangled in the surprisingly cold water.

It was easy to imagine escaped slaves hiding up in the hills; places too isolated, steep, and rocky to have been terraced by plantation owners. It was easy to imagine them gathering water from these pools. Yes, they had been here.

I'd like to think we were the first white people to ever see it. It seems possible.

Erva and I ate our sandwiches as we lounged on the sun bathed rocks. All that could be heard besides Happy panting contently near-by, was the breeze blowing through the trees, the echoing calls of various birds, the rustle of lizards as they scurried about the dead-fall. We were utterly alone in the world. We didn't want to leave, but we knew we had to get back home to The Castle before it got too late. As we didn't have a watch we had to keep track of time by keeping track of where the sun was. There is no long twilight in the islands. When the sun goes down it gets dark very quickly. Down there in the ghut it would grow dark even more quickly because of the steep hills. It was kind of like being in the Grand Canyon. We had to get back home.

We didn't get lost, we found our way out without a problem. But we were changed. We were somehow different than we had been only a few hours before. We knew something very few other people knew about. Not only that, we had experienced something spiritual.

When we got home we were excited to tell Mom and Dad all about what we had found. I think it may have been next week-end we took Mom down to see it. She found rare terrestrial orchids, and we brought home the biggest walking stick we have ever seen before or since, a good 5 inches long, without feelers. It had landed on Mom's shirt and rode on her shoulder the whole way home.

On our third trip, Erva and I took Vince Mrazik, a National Park Service Ranger, and Henry Fafala, the head gardener for Caneel Bay to see that most miraculous place. But we didn't just go to the pools. We went all the way to were the ghut terminates into Fish Bay. We actually climbed down that waterfall by tying a rope to a tree and sort of belaying ourselves over the rocks. We found other pools of water, with crayfish in them as long as my forearm. Remember I was a small child...but still, those crayfish were BIG. We also found an old iron cauldron, the kind used to boil sugar cane juice, wedged into some rocks. At some time during a flood it must have tumbled it's way down the ghut before getting lodge. Dad met us at Fish Bay in our boat the FDO and took us back to Cruz Bay. Otherwise we would have had to have made the long hard climb up to the Monte Catchment before being met by someone in a jeep.

In the years that followed we took only the most special people to our special place. We learned the pools were deep. Deep enough to swim in. And yes, there was water in them year round.

Below, though yellowed with age are three photos taken at The Ghut in January of 1978.

That's Anna my dog, peeking over the top. She's happy, see that smile?

Here she is again, still smiling, directly above the upper pool.

And this is the upper pool. At center left is an area that looks almost black with white speckles, that's the lower pool with reflected sunlight. It's a long way straight down.

Geologically, the fall was caused eons ago when the earth shifted suddenly along a fault line, some of it falling away, some of it being pushed upwards. The fault still exists. It's possible one day it could shift again.

I have not been back in a long, long time. It's unlikely that I'll ever return as too many people know about it now and I fear I would find evidence of human thoughtlessness, trash, plastic. So I choose, as Erva does, to remember it as it was when we first saw it, a sacred place that gave itself to us and that never harmed us when we visited.

Remembrances of Gifft Hill - The Ghut - Part Two

We were in another world.

We were explorers going where no one had gone before. It was unlikely we'd actually get lost, but going down stream was the safest thing to do, it would lead us to the ocean. So that's what we did.

The hills rose steeply on either side of us, surrounding us, giving a sense of being very isolated and far anyway from everything. The ghut itself was wide. In some places it must have been at least 40 feet across, maybe more. It's hard for me to judge. I was so small when I was 8. I remember things being bigger than they really are. But even when I went down there as a teen and young adult, there were places where that ghut was very wide. A tremendous amount of water gets moved down it.

Most other ghuts we'd ever explored were at most 20 or so feet across, this one was way different. It was so wide there was open sky high above us, places where the overhanging trees and steep sides of the hills didn't block out the narrow band of blue.

We were amazed, awed, stunned by its hugeness and its incredible beauty. It was lush, the epitome of tropical. Huge elephant ear philodendrons (if you scroll down you can see a woman beside a large leaf) grew along the banks, clinging to rocks and trees. Their leaves were large enough that the two of us could stand under a single leaf. They made excellent umbrellas against both the sun and rain. There were anthuriums of various kinds and ferns. As we climbed our way around and over rocks, we were continually met with one spectacular thing after another. And every time we did all we could say was, "We gotta bring Mom here. She won't believe this 'til she sees it."

We had no idea where we really were. We had no idea how far we had to go to find those mysterious pools, or even if we were going in the right direction. But it didn't matter. We had found paradise.

Meanwhile, as we ogled and gasped, Happy explored ahead. He never let us out of his sight. I'm sure if he had stumbled upon a wild girl-eating animal, he would have defended us to the death. Lucky for us, there were no dangerous animals, not even poisonous snakes. The most we had to contend with was running into the web of the copper spider, a member of the orb family. Their web silk is strong and sticky and it's kind of freaky to get tangled up in it. But the spiders, fearsome as they look, are harmless. They can also be kind of big, easily spanning an adult palm.

There was also the real threat of disturbing a wasp nest.
The Monday wasps (also called Jack Spaniards) look like these guys only they're a bit bigger. This is a picture of Friday wasps. Mondays are easily angered and quick to sting first and ask questions later. Fridays are more laid back. If you disturb a nest, they'll fly around it check things out see if there's any danger and if there isn't settle back down. It's like they know the week-end is coming and they're cool. But those Mondays, they are pissed off all the time because it's the first day of the week. They like to build their nests under leaves so as we crashed and thrashed our way through the bush there was a chance we could have gotten zapped. But we didn't.

But we braved them both. Particularly me, who used to be near phobic about spiders.

Eventually we came to a place where the ghut was very wide and curved to the left. Always we'd been able to see the ghut ahead, been able to see it bending to the right or left. But when we came around that bend...we were met with open space and sunlight. We could see the sky and the hills beyond. But here was no more ghut. It had disappeared.

Stay tuned for The Ghut - Part Three.

Remembrances of Gifft Hill - The Ghut - Part One

The Virgin Islands are steep and volcanic in origin. Basically the the whole Caribbean chain is a mountain range, the islands are the tops of those mountains sticking up out of the ocean. St. John rises from sea level to its highest point of 1277 feet at Bordeaux Mountain, boom, just like that. There is no gradual. The hills are all pushed together like a piece of fabric that's been casually wadded up and tossed on the floor. Roads and trails twist and turn and go up and down with very few places that are flat.

In between all the folds of hills there are ghuts (pronouced "gut".) Ghuts are dry washes or gullies. (I don't know where the word ghut comes from it's not in my big dictionary. It might be Danish.) When it rains little ghuts feed into large ghuts which feed into big ghuts that carry the water to the sea. When we have heavy rainstorms (floods) in the islands we call them ghut washes. But no matter how hard it rains, a ghut never runs for long. Once the rain is over, the flow stops within a few days and the ghut dries up within a week to ten days. My sister and I, along with various friends, explored many ghuts as it was exciting to discover either where they originated or where they ended. They were most fun to explore after a good rain because when the ghuts were running, there were small waterfalls and pools full of tadpoles. They are transformed from dry rocky stream beds into a wet magical fairyland. We could sit in pools and have water pour over us. We could pretend we were in Hawaii or the Amazon or some other equally exotic wet place.

When Heber Thomas finally showed me and Erva where the trail was that led to a ghut he said had water in it year round, we were determined to go exploring. It just didn't seem possible that anything like that could exist. Year round pools of water? No way.

One Saturday Erva and I were left at home to our devises, something that didn't happen too often. Mom and Dad were probably working at The Garage in Cruz Bay. It was the perfect opportunity. We decided to take off into the bush in search of what was to become known in our family simply as The Ghut. Erva was 12, I was 8.

Erva, being a girl scout, brought along her girl scout knife and a canteen of water. We also made a couple of sandwiches. But most importantly we took our dog, Happy. We knew he would lead us back home if we did get lost. Happy was one of those dogs, if he took it into his head that he didn't want to be left alone at home, would track us down. He'd found us several times, at The Garage, at Trunk Bay. These places weren't just down the road, they were three to five miles away. He'd just suddenly show up, all happy to see us and demanding to know, "Why didn't you let me to come too and go get me some water I'm thirsty." So Erva and I felt very confident about charging into unknown territory when we had Himself with us.

It's difficult to describe what we saw, what we experienced, as we pushed our way down the steep trail that was partially overgrown mostly with wild pineapples and catch-n-keep. The wild pineapple, locally known as ping wing, is a bromelliad. It's two and three foot long leaves have spines all along the edges. The tip of the leaf is needle sharp. The whole plant can grow to three and four feet across and that tall as well. From their centers, like regular pineapples, a flower stalk will form, but instead of producing a single fruit, these plants produce a large cluster of almond-shaped fruits about the size of a kiwi. They turn yellow when they're ripe and are edible but extremely astringent. They cause your mouth to dry up and tingle. These plants grow in big massed clusters and are just about impossible to get through. I wish a had a picture to show you.

Catch-n-keep, an Acacia, is a viny bush. It drapes itself over anything that gets in its way and is a predominate plant in the bush. From a distance it is quite pretty with its feathery emerald green leaves. And when it blooms, as in the picture below, the hillsides are covered with large patches of white. It can look for all the world as if there has been a dusting of snow.

But every inch of it is covered in tiny hooked barbs.

It ain't called catch-n-keep for nothin'. The thin, flexible, vine-like branches catch hold of whatever brushes against it and the more you tug in an effort to pull away, the more those little hooks dig in. There are only two ways to become untangled. One is to cut off the offending branches and gently pull them off or to carefully go forward into the bush so the hooks are loosened and gently extricate yourself. It is rather like those Chinese finger cuffs where the harder you pull to release your fingers, the tighter it becomes. You have to push the ends together to get free. It's the same sort of principle with the catch-n-keep. The only thing is, no matter how careful you are, you are bound to get scratches.

Erva and I, being either stupid or brazen bush-babies wore shorts and sneakers and probably sleeveless shirts. Suffice it to say Erva did battle with the ping wing and the catch-n-keep using her knife to cut away the spiked leaves and clawed branches but neither of us was spared a few sharp pokes or long scratches.

After we broke through the needles and thorns the trail opened up a bit. Now it was lined with maran bush (a wild sage) with its dusty silvery somewhat itchy leaves that were used for scrubbing pots. Down and down and down the hillside we went. The farther down we went the more open and the less tangled with bush the trail became, the more trees appeared. The trail was probably kept open by cows and goats foraging for food. Eventually we came to place where the trail crossed a small wash. We could see where it picked up on the other side but debated about whether to follow the wash to the left, or continue on the trail which sort of went to the right, but more straight ahead. We chose to follow the path. Since this was a fork in the "road" Erva made marks in the trees with her trusty knife.

We were now in a different environment. We were under a canopy of trees, genips mostly, but also mompoos and towering gre-gre trees. (Couldn't find a link.) There was also lots of wild tamarind and crumberries. I believe crumberries and guavaberries are the same thing. The crumberry trees produce dark blue-purple berries that look like a blue berry. They are delicious too. Wild tamarind is a member of the Mimosa family. It is very prevalent and can be kind of obnoxcious but at least it doesn't have thorns.

So there we were at the bottom, in a deep narrow valley between the hills. We had survived the claws of the dragon, the itching powder of witches, and had been rewarded for our bravery with cool shade. It was quiet down there, peaceful. The trail wound among the trees for a little way and then emptied itself into...the biggest, widest, most rock and bolder-strewn ghut either of us had ever seen.

Stay tuned for The Ghut - Part Two.

My First Cat

I guess I was about seven when I got my first cat. I got to pick him out of the litter and name him. I don’t think we knew he was going to grow into a big old Tom, so it’s kind of ironic that I named him Kitty Puss.

Upon bringing him home our dog, Happy, who was about six months old, proceeded to lick the poor kitten until he was absolutely soaking wet. Happy used to carry Kitty Puss around. He didn’t pick Kitty Puss up by the scruff of the neck. No…he put the cat’s whole head in his mouth and Kitty Puss let himself be carried around like that, perfectly calm, hanging limply from Happy’s mouth. They were best buds and often slept together.

Kitty Puss’s docile nature made him an excellent doll. I dressed him up in my Tiny Tears doll clothes and pushed him around in my doll carriage. The proof is in these two pictures taken when I was about eight years old.

I would also put my mother’s lipstick on his face and take it off with cold cream. He never struggled, never clawed, never bit, never even growled.

I loved that cat.

But we were not destined to have him for long. He was no more than three years old when he was poisoned. He got very sick and for several days wouldn’t eat. Then one day he drank a little milk and we thought he was getting better. That night we went to Gus and Charlotte’s for dinner. When we got back home I was the first one in the door, eager to see how my cat was doing. I will never forget seeing him stretched out on the floor, his mouth and eyes open….I knew. I screamed and hollered and cried and had to be comforted. I was devastated.

No cat has ever been able to take his place. That goes for Happy too, who lived twelve years. Although he tolerated all the other cats we had, he was never a friend to any of them the way he was a friend to Kitty Puss.

I’m sure the two are lying in dappled shade on the soft grass of the Elysian Fields enjoying each other’s company.

The Swing and the Mampoo Tree

Birthdays in my family were usually quietly celebrated at home. It was a day the celebrant didn’t have to do any of the usual household chores expected of them. Gifts were opened in the morning. At the end of the day a favorite dinner was prepared, there was a cake and, if we were lucky, there was ice cream too.

I’m sure all of that happened on my 10th birthday, but I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember any of the gifts I got either, except for one.

We were living up at Gift Hill on St. John. Probably after breakfast my father took us all outside. He had a surprise for me. We followed him out to the mampoo tree where he had things all set up, waiting for this moment. Then for the first and last time in my life, I saw him climb a tree. My mother was probably nervous watching him up there…would that branch hold his weight? Mampoos are softwood trees. There was a real danger the branch could break under him.

He shimmied out onto a limb and, with all of us directing him, carefully positioned two chains which were attached to a nice wide wooden board. My father’s present to me was a swing.

It wasn’t just a swing in a tree. One must close ones eyes and try to visualize where the swing was. The mampoo tree grew on a slight rise of ground with the hillside sloping away at its feet. The hill drops steeply down into the long, wide, deep valley of the Fish Bay ghutt. (Pronounced gut, it is a rocky wash, a gulley, where water flows when it rains.) The hills rise on the other side of the ghutt and continue east. The view is of the south side of the island. From the swing I could see the white cliffs of Reef Bay all the way to Ram’s Head Point. On clear days the conical hills of Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands some 40 miles away, are visible. All of that is to the left. To the right, as far as the eye can see, unobstructed by islands, is the wide open expanse of the Caribbean Sea. I could watch the ocean change moods.

It was and still remains, a glorious and magnificent view.

Tree and swing were positioned in such a way that when I would swing it was like flying. I’d soar out into a great space, out over the valley, out over the hills swooping toward Reef Bay, and fly out over the vastness of the sea. Then, swinging back, I was embraced by the waiting, protective arms of the tree and brought safely back to earth. Out into space, back into arms – Out in space, back into arms.

I loved that swing and tree.

I thought of myself as a kind and benevolent queen who ruled over a fairy world inhabited by lizards, birds, insects and flowers. It was my job to keep everyone safe. It was my job to love that view, that tree, and all those creatures living within it. I knew no one would ever be able to love it as much as me. In my little girl mind, I thought without me to love that space, it would become lonely.

Two years later, when I was twelve, one of the greatest upheavals of my life took place. We had to move from Gift Hill. We had to move from St. John. We had to move to St. Thomas.

Oh, it was horrible! I didn’t want to move. Everything and everyone I loved was on St. John. And my kingdom…what would become of my kingdom? Who would love it? Who could love the tree, the view, the animals? Whose arms and legs would climb the tree and hug it? Whose ears would hear the rustle of lizards, the songs of birds, and understand their music? Who would protect it all and keep it safe? Who would keep it from being lonely? No one.

I agonized over it. I felt guilty for having to leave my kingdom. And I knew, deep in my heart, my kingdom would be just as lost and lonely without me and I would be without it.

What was I going to do? And then a solution came to me.

One day, not long before we left Gift Hill, never to return, I preformed a little ceremony and made a vow.

At the base of the mampoo tree there was a hollow space beneath the roots, a niche where I put special things like rocks and shells. It was also a place where I laid to rest dead lizards and birds I found. It was both a safe and a tomb, a shrine and an altar.

From somewhere I got a small round tin box with a lid, like a cookie or cracker tin. I went out to my tree and kingdom and this is what I did. I placed my hands on my chest, I cradled my heart in my hands and I carefully placed my heart in the tin. As I did that I told my tree and kingdom that I was leaving my heart with them. I told them they would never be lonely because I would always be with them. I vowed I would never take my heart away.

Then I put the lid on and took the tin and put it into the hollow place beneath the tree.

The consequences of making that vow, of leaving my heart at Gift Hill, made mysterious waves that washed up on the shores of my life, leaving behind odd bits of debris. I will only say that I was a kind of cripple because I was never able to be truly happy or content. There was always something wrong, I never quite fit anywhere I went later in life.

It was a long time before I realized how displaced and uprooted I was and why.

There came a day many years later that I stood in the place where once a tree had stood. It was gone by then, cut down, blown over in a storm….I stood there and knew I had to take back my heart else I would never be content no matter where I went or what I did.

I found my heart where I had left it, overlooking the view. I called it to me. I cradled it in my hands, I placed my hands on my chest and I put my heart back.

I told my kingdom I had to break my vow, because I could not live without my heart. With tears in my eyes I asked to be forgiven. Then I assured them a piece of me would always be with them, that I would never forget them, that I held the memory of my kingdom sacred and precious.

I felt a peace descend. The view, my kingdom, seemed to smile at me. I thought it would be sad, but it understood. We shared something between us that was ours and no one else’s. It is something that no one will ever be able to take away from us.

Today, right now, this instant, there is a little girl in her swing who is a benevolent queen of a mystical realm. She reigns eternally.

I am never far away from my kingdom nor is my kingdom ever alone. And somewhere in the soil are the chemical remains of tin box.

This picture was taken when I was about seven. To the right, in the back, is the mampoo tree. The brush around the tree had yet to be cleared, but the branch from which my swing was hung is visible. It arches away from the trunk, right to left, and seems to be bending down towards me. Note that I am wearing flip-flops. My mother is doing some weeding among the rocks. The two 55 gallon drums contain gasoline for the generator that gave us light at night and kerosene which was for our kerosene refrigerator. The dog is Happy, who deserves and will one day have, a book written about him.