Last time I dated a girl, it lasted about four months. It didn’t seem very long. I’ve been on St. John about four months. It seems…very long. I feel like I’ve gotten AT LEAST to second base with St. John (in those morally noble and gentlemanly ways) and so my days off are no longer exploration trips, but instead visits to my favorite places, based on experience and process of elimination – in the future I want to point out some of the more fun things to do on St. John that you may or may not read in a guidebook. Today is for storytime, however. Gather round kids.
There once was a magical place called St. John, where the hiking was of low intensity, low mileage, and high in spectacular vistas. The guts are by far some of the best areas to explore, unless you are elderly, inexperienced, or a daytime-soap-opera type of person. A gut is essentially a carved-out waterway between two mountains where the rains flush through on their way to the ocean. The environment is really undeveloped, rugged, and diverse, and changes dramatically depending on where the gut is and how often its been raining. They are areas that are just teeming with wildlife, due to all the fresh water being carried through and the lack of development and traffic. The gut is sort of like a creek bed filled with massive boulders, fallen trees, and carved-out freshwater pools that can be as deep as 15 feet, as well as some spectacular waterfalls set right in that tropical setting. Along the banks are all sorts of neat fruit-bearing trees, endless green and purple ferns, and smaller tributary creeks contributing to the gut. All sorts of animals chill out in the area: crabs and shrimp and crawdads make a seafood buffet in the pools, dragonflies hover all over, and Jack Spaniards (the local bee flavor) keep you alert, and wild pigs romp around.
(The beginning of Battery Gut.)
I’ll definitely describe some of the guts specifically in said future post, but this morning I started my day off bright and early by doing Battery Gut (named after a battle between rebellious slaves and their owners back in the day. And no, I haven’t found any spears or muskets in the water…yet). I was joined by a good friend and fellow explorer Andrew, who will probably be making many a guest appearance in future narratives. We’d both already done this gut (its definitely one of the better ones on the island), but due to a heavy period of rain the last week (here, the showers are either 7 minutes or 7 days), we were pretty stoked for all the freshwater pools to be filled and the waterfalls to be a-pourin. We were hiking/scrambling/hopping our way down this rock-strewn gut, but we had to do so cautiously because most of the smaller rocks were slick from the recent rainfall. The bigger ones were drier, so we were aiming our jumps for those boulders (on a previous hike as Andrew did this, a friend asked him, ”Why do you hate your ankles so much?") Its easy to jump seven to ten feet down or across, or both, and places like that tend to bring out the 9-year old boy in most people.
(Not the 70-foot waterfall - but a great area still. Ends in a nice, deep pool.)
After about an hour, we arrived at a stunning 70-foot waterfall with an astonishing vista-view of the lush green mountains and then onto the ocean. The top of the waterfall had a large shelf about ten feet down where the water collected into this perfectly round, ten foot carved basin and then spilled down another 60 feet into a wider pool. It’s the sort of place that you just have to stop for a little while, as it has the perfect blend of the sublime and the serene, power and peacefulness. Eventually, we pulled ourselves out of the restful reverie and began cautiously scrambling down the waterfall, which was angled at a mostly-comfortable 120 degrees. There were plenty of hand- and foot-holds…in most places. I was most of the way down and was experimenting with an orange-ish bumpy substance near the waterflow that I’d noticed, which had deceivingly terrific traction. I was commenting on this to Andrew as I inched my way down with my hands confidently in my pockets, and he replied that he’d seen it too, but “don’t get it confused with the slimy reddish stuff near it which is really sli-“ and as he finished his sentence (ppery, for the slower audience) my feet started sliding, my arms started windmilling and before you knew it, I was the classic cartoon-on-a-banana-peel just trying to stay upright as I built up speed, careening down the waterfall, and shot off the ten-foot drop-off into the murky pool of unknown depth below! Right before I hit the water at full, uncontrolled speed, I belted out my potentially last words: “MY CAMERA!” Hoping that my legs had better luck than the camera in my back pocket, I splashed into the just-deep enough 3-foot pool of water and popped out deeply relived and slightly shaken (this was a very different experience than my gig as a stunt double for The Last of the Mohicans).
(This IS the waterfall, from a distance.)
My safe landing gave Andrew permission to laugh hysterically, and we continued to scramble and bounce our way down as the boulders grew bigger, the pools grew deeper, and my confidence once again grew from that of my mother’s to a 9-year-old at recess. Thank goodness, because right before the last section, some kind soul had set up an epic rope swing over a pool, from a boulder a solid 25 feet up. We took turns swinging and jumping and whooping (injury-free, though not without foolishness), and after collecting some delicious-smelling bay rum leaves (which serve as excellent aftershave alternatives), then hitchhiked back and debated whether or not we were created with purpose or, made from chaos, we made it ourselves.
“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” -Jack London
“Live as if Christ died yesterday, rose this morning & is coming back tomorrow.” - Martin Luther
Me, at the deli afterwards: Oh! Chicken pot pie!
Andrew: Dude, those are like my three favorite things!
Oh, nostalgia. A small part of me misses that place.
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