Lost Worlds Page 16

  “What about on this side?”

  “Well—there’s a beach—a real long one—Seventeen Mile Beach, they call it—goes all the way down the other side of the lagoon. Pink sand, palm trees….”

  “And no people?”

  “Yeah—no people. No one. You got miles and miles of beach and no one. Couple of ponds with good water. Tha’s ’bout it.”

  “Can you show me how to get there?”

  He burst out laughing. “You jus’ like what they say about the Barbudans. People in Antigua think they crazy. Always doin’ things different. Don’t want development, don’t want tourists. Wan’ to just be left alone. They kept asking them British to let ’em go independent of Antigua. They still write to the queen asking! They wan’ to keep their land communal like it’s always been. They claim they got ‘rights’ since way back when they were slaves. They don’t want to be in the ‘Bird Cage’!”

  “What Bird Cage?”

  “Y’know—the Birds—Vere Bird, Lester Bird, Vere Bird, Jr.—all them Bird family that runs Antigua.”

  I laughed. It was the first time I’d heard the expression, and from all I’d learned on “the big island” it seemed most appropriate.

  “There’s this guy, Arthur Nibbs, young lawyer born on Barbuda. Chairman of the Barbuda Council. He really tells ’em: ‘Barbudans’ll do a mass suicide on the beaches if they don’t get independence from Antigua.’ He said that and most of ’em here, they agree with him. They just wan’ to be left alone. To be like they’ve always been. They like bein’ free—they like bein’ Robinson Crusoes!”

  “I think I know how they feel,” I said.

  “Yeah, well. You still crazy.”

  I suppose I was, but I did it anyway. Sam had to go back to Antigua but said that either he or one of his friends would be back in Codrington in four days.

  “I’ll see you in town if you ready to go back then,” he said.

  “I’ll buy you a beer.”

  “No—you get a beer from me if you make it!”

  Sam let me off the boat a mile or so south of the mangrove lagoon. A narrow path wriggled away from the reedy shore and disappeared into a mass of thorn bushes and cactus.

  “You walk on through, less’n a mile, till you get to the beach on the other side. Shame you don’t have a gun. There’s wild pigs in there and deer. You sure you got enough food?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” It was more of that dehydrated package stuff, but all I needed was a fire and some water. I’d also gotten some nylon line and a couple of hooks in one of those Boy Scout fishing kits.

  He still looked uncertain. I think he was really convinced I was crazy.

  “Sam—stop worrying. We’re only talking a few days!”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So—see you Thursday.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good-bye, Sam.” He was beginning to make me feel nervous.

  “Yeah. Okay.” He chuckled. “Best of luck, Crazy Crusoe! Tha’s what you are. Dam’ Crazy Crusoe!”

  His boat was soon a tiny speck in the broad blue lagoon.

  It is suddenly very quiet. The evening chirps and clicks and cricket-scratchings have yet to begin. Everything is still and limp in the late afternoon heat. I’m on my own again and it feels wonderful.

  The thorn bushes are worse than I’d expected and I keep losing the almost invisible path and ending up in impenetrable thickets with four-inch thorns that reach out and snag every bit of clothing and flesh they touch.

  According to a sweat-stained map that Sam had given me as a parting gift, it is only half a mile or so across the narrow peninsula to the beach. But the path doesn’t seem to want to go straight. It twists and loops like lacework, keeping to the higher ground above swampy patches covered in enticing low grasses.

  And then, it’s there. An ocean of sloppy, slow-moving wavelets, shimmering in a heat mist; a fringe of low, bent palms offering welcome shade and a beach of the most beautiful pink sand I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world.

  Actually to call it merely a beach is an insult. It is a magnificent, slowly curving strand of talcum-soft silica stretching into hazy infinities in both directions. Untouched, unbroken, unspoiled by any sign of human intrusion. No buildings, no boats, no people, no nothing. Just me and this perfect place—this little lost world set in a turquoise ocean under a dome of blue sky. All mine!

  Here I am, I thought, singing again in my solitary madness.

  Poor old Sam. He’d felt my “madness” and seemed worried. I sense it too now but feel elated—and I remember some words from Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s beautiful book, A Gift from the Sea:

  The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.

  I have nowhere special to go, nothing to do. I don’t even have to think, if I can persuade my restless mind to switch off for a while and become part of this beautiful place.

  Be patient, I tell myself.

  And slowly, slowly as a rising tide, the calm comes.

  At one point, meandering across the endless sands, letting the grains tickle my toes, I look down on my mind as if floating over a familiar turbulent landscape. And what clutter I see there—what a jumbled topography of fears and feelings and disjointed, shadowy memories. Like an attic into which I throw things haphazardly, promising myself the pleasures of sorting it all out one day into neat piles and boxes. I’ve noticed I do that with my studio back home—letting it become a chaotic mess of papers and drawings and slide boxes and half-finished writings and notes to myself and broken pencils and unread magazines. And then—suddenly—in a whirl of organizing glee I file, fold, pack, stack, and rack all the clutter into neatly labeled packages, sweep the floors, clean the windows, wash fingerprints and coffee stains and cigar ash from my desk. And it’s new again. A model studio, almost fit to be photographed for the glossy “house” magazines…. Ah. If only minds could be tidied up so neatly and so quickly.

  But there again. Unlike my studio, which is the only working space I have, my head has other spaces I can enter, spaces beyond the finite mind, that are far less cluttered. A little cobwebby, perhaps, from underuse, but lean and roomy and fresh. Spaces to dream in; spaces in which to experience new sensations and see new patterns of understanding; spaces to explore, as seemingly infinite as this beach and the ocean that skitters and dances and plays across its pinkness.

  I realize once again that the magic of “lost world” exploration is not to be found merely in the external adventures and discoveries—wonderful and terrifying though they are—but in the lost worlds that such experiences lead us to find within ourselves. Those “other spaces” in the spirit that beckon and tantalize us all but in which we spend far too little time.

  The sun is sinking now, easing down through the darkening blues into brilliant layers of scarlet, crimson, and old gold. The haze lifts as the heat diminishes and I can see, way on the edge of the horizon, the purpling peaks of Nevis, Saint Eustatius and—very faintly—the volcanic pyramid of strange little Saba. The far western outposts of the Leeward Islands. Dramatic and mysterious in profile, but all gentle, peaceful places, still unspoiled by the rampant tourist extravaganzas that have raped and pillaged the more popular Caribbean islands.

  And here I am. On the quietest, most peaceful place of all. Alone. Enjoying my Robinson Crusoe fantasies and writing snippets of thoughts to myself as the sunset gilds the trunks of the leaning palm trees and sends shimmers of gold threading across the frothy tops of lazy waves. Lying quietly here, with no thoughts except this one.

  When I allow my eyes to really see, freed from the filters of the mind, I’m amazed at how much I don’t see most days. In the mystery and silence of this evening I’m tingling. I feel renewed in some way, excited by the smallest det
ails—a flash of light on the crystalline surfaces of sand grains; the purposeful, determined movements of a tiny crab, hardly bigger than a dime, scurrying along the edges of the sloppy surf; the slow circle patterns traced in the sky hundreds of feet above me by five frigate birds, wings outstretched but unmoving, merely floating on the spirals.

  I’m here, emptied, waiting to be filled again.

  I strip off everything and stroll into the ocean, letting the water lick around my ankles. I hear the suck of surf, the gentle grasp of the tide, the rumble of pebbles moving in the deeper places, and sense the slow rounding down of everything.

  I walk in until the sea reaches my navel and then turn to lie on my back, letting the warm water hold me, moving me slowly into the shore, then easing me out again. Solitude seems so natural now. Life welcomes the void and fills me—with little secrets.

  Much later I find a bowl of soft sand between two palms. I spread out my groundsheet, spray myself against an expected onslaught of mosquitoes that never comes, and light a small fire of dead palm fronds and broken branches dragged from the scrub behind the beach. I plan a dinner from a handful of dehydrated food packages and then realize I’m not hungry. How about a fish? About time you tried out that little Boy Scout box with the nylon line and the brightly colored float. But somehow the idea of actually killing something and eating it doesn’t appeal. A handful of dried fruits and raisins is fine.

  And then something very odd. A sudden change of mood. I feel very alone. Even vulnerable.

  A shiver of fear starts in my neck and jiggers all the way to my toes. Fear of what? I can’t pin it down. I just have this need for company. For some familiar sound or voice. Even a radio…. That’s it. My trusty little shortwave radio. My dependable friend that keeps me in touch with the world in the remotest of places. I reach out for my backpack and feel around in the dim light for its familiar form. Out it comes, earphone and all. Switch it on. It’s already switched on. And there’s no little red light to tell me I’m tuned in to the BBC World Service, or Radio Moscow, or Voice of America—or even Radio Cuba. Nothing at all. Just a useless black plastic box with two burned-out batteries and no replacements. Well—I didn’t know I was going to go wandering off like this. I’d planned to be back in Antigua with Sam tonight. If I’d have known I was going to do this dumb Robinson Crusoe thing I’d have brought all kinds of stuff—my tiny tape player, more food, a flashlight, books.

  I scribble depressing thoughts in my notebook: A loneliness creeps in with the dusk, lowering the ceiling of thoughts, closing off feelings, edging out the adventure.

  A voice inside niggles: So now you’re really on your own, mate! My mind whirls around like a caged monkey, trying to find a way to subdue this surge of loneliness and these odd fears. It’s crazy. There I was, an hour or so ago, blissfully floating in the ocean, writing little mellow thoughts to myself, absorbed in the silence and stillness of this place. And now here I am, struggling like a straightjacketed madman, desperately seeking noise and distraction, unable to return to those calm, tranquil spaces in my head.

  It’s all so ridiculous. This earth wanderer, explorer of wild places and lost worlds, panicked because his stupid shortwave radio won’t work and scared by the sounds and rustling movements in the scrub behind me.

  There’s something in there! that damnable little voice shrieks inside my skull.

  But what? Sam said there were no snakes here—at least none that are dangerous. Maybe a few wild pigs, but most of those were supposed to be way off on the other side of the island around the caves and clefts of the limestone Highlands. So what the hell is moving back there?

  I turn to stare into the thick scrub. In the light of the dying fire I can see nothing except dark shadows.

  Forget it, I tell myself. Enjoy the last of the light, faintly pink behind the black silhouettes of the far islands. Get your head back to where it was before. Have a drink of rum. Write another one of those scribbles to yourself. Stop thinking! Just enjoy being here.

  But I am right.

  There is something behind me. I can hear it moving closer now, coming through the scrub toward me. The faint crack of a twig; a rattling of dry leaves. Something is there….

  I sit absolutely motionless. Whatever it is may not have seen me. And I can escape easily. A fast trot into the sea—even a quick scamper up one of the palm trees. I’m safe.

  And the deer thinks so too.

  It steps daintily out of the bushes a few yards to my left, lifting small feet in a tiptoe motion, easing across the spiky grasses.

  It seems a very small deer, hardly more than hip height. Maybe a young fawn. And barely distinguishable from the shadows in the last glimmers of dusk. Except for the eyes. Bright, full, and unblinking. Staring straight at me.

  We both remain absolutely still. Its tail and ears are erect. I don’t sense any fear in the creature. Perhaps a little caution, but mostly curiosity.

  It takes a couple of steps toward me, shaking each of its front legs as it walks, and then pauses and lowers its head, maybe as a way of seeing me better. Maybe even a gesture of acknowledgment. I’ve never been so close to a deer before except in a zoo and I breathe as quietly as I can. I know little about these animals, although I’ve always loved the gracefulness of their movements.

  The deer raises its head again and allows its tail to drop. Its eyes are still fixed on mine. Such calm eyes. Beguiling.

  I suddenly have a flash of the monkey I’d once watched long ago in the rain forest of Costa Rica’s Tortuguero National Park. An old whiteface, sitting in a banyan tree, staring at me with dark, stern eyes set in a wrinkled and strangely human face. I remember the sensation I’d had—that the creature somehow knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling. He seemed very old and wise and even a little sad at what he saw below him. He just sat there, never shifting his gaze. My guide had whispered to me, “I seen him before. I know him.” The jungle was utterly still; nothing moved. And then he was gone. A few waving leaves, a quick shadow in the gloom, and then nothing.

  “Bet he could teach you a few things,” my guide had said.

  And that’s the feeling I have once again. Somehow in the stillness and calm of that small deer I sense an enormous knowingness. It is almost talking to me with those eyes. I stare back and for a while nothing happens. Everything is very quiet and still. Even the surf is silent. And then I feel a great warmth well up inside, a surge of something milky, spreading out to my arms and fingers and up into my head, easing out all the yammer and fear and loneliness and replacing it, once again, with the sheer joy of just being here in this lovely place.

  I can’t stop a grin from spreading across my face. I feel cleansed of all the garbage of the previous hour. The more I smile, the better I feel.

  The ravings of a crazy man? Sam would have thought so, but then he’d said something on our trip over I hadn’t really absorbed at the time but which was similar to my feelings now. We’d been watching the birds and then the antics of a couple of turtles as we entered the narrow channel through the coral heads at the top end of the lagoon.

  “They can live to be a coupla hundred years old, those turtles. Been goin’ long before us humans came along. They got the wisdom of a few million years behind ’em.”

  In the deer’s soft, calm eyes I sense the essence of those wisdoms. Not the noisy “I got it!” revelations of human perceptions—things to be debated and dissected and discarded at will—but something much deeper, much more ancient, much more enduring.

  And then, like my Costa Rican whiteface monkey, it is gone. A shake of the head, a flick of the tail, and gentle dainty retreat into the dark scrub behind the palms.

  I sit for a long time in silence, letting the joy-waves ride up and down my body. I don’t need the radio now. I don’t need company, or distractions. All those elusive fears, the loneliness, are gone.

  For tonight, at least, I just need me.

  Time doesn’t really exist anymore. My watch is stowed deep i
n the backpack and my body begins to respond to its own rhythms. Rhythms of which I’m too often unaware. I sleep when I’m sleepy or when it’s too hot to walk out on the open beach. I boil a packet of beef stroganoff for breakfast because I suddenly feel like eating beef stroganoff. Halfheartedly I try fishing in the shallows with the line and float and a bit of leftover beef as bait. But I think even the fish can sense I’m not really trying. And it’s too hot anyway. They’re doubtless off in deeper, cooler places doing whatever fish do down there in the heat of the day.

  I scribble more thoughts to myself as I stroll through the surf in the early evening. And the beach just goes on and on—endlessly arcing away in both directions, mile after mile of soft pink sand unmarked by footprints or anything else that suggests the island has ever seen a human here before.

  It’s all mine.

  That one thought keeps dancing through my head like a woodland sprite. Rarely if ever have I felt so free and unencumbered by plans or projects or fears or uncertainties. I have no guides to worry about—or, as is more usually the case, to worry about me. I have no one to meet, nothing to do, nothing to say, nothing even to think, if I don’t feel like thinking.

  And that’s what I’m enjoying most. The lack of thinking. For much of the time my mind is content to see without looking, to feel without analyzing. Just to be. To walk softly in the glimmering light…and disappear!

  I am learning to expect nothing—to expect no expectations. So what comes? Lovely surprises, of course, all the time. The perfection of a shell in all its whirling wonder; the shapes in a piece of driftwood—two horses, a hand, a mountain landscape in miniature, a breast pertly nippled; the incredible life in a dead vine still clutching, strangling, a withered tree trunk. So many moments in a single moment!

  Letting go, flowing with the flow of things, and, for a single second, being infinite.