Monday, March 27, 2006
Stalking Invasives at Cinchona - 032706
I teased the weed from the stalk, unravelled the seeds, rolled a joint and lit up, on the porch of colonial tyrannies past, Cinchona's Great House, where once were Brits, now sagging, yielding, to Jamaica, leaks in the roof, rotting holes in the floor, paint flaking from the walls, dust settling. The chimney and fireplace still held strong. I knew the script, had seen enough vestiges, along the Potomac river, and in the Shenandoah Mountains, to know that the chimney would stand to the end, long past when the walls and roof fell in on themselves, rotted away, vines sagging into sunken delineations. The wood and paper would fade, leaving broken glass scattered among the foundation stones, as the forest closed in, while the slow-eroding pillar of the chimney remained, a century later.
I lit and smoked, overlooking the garden, archaic vestiges, of Britannia, where the tides of Imperialism had washed and then receeded. The garden rolled out genteelely below me, close-cropped lawn and arboreal esotericae, absurd eccentricities of trees. A reminiscence of Kew Gardens, of that Victorian Glorification of the exotic, when the one of the best tributes to an expanding world of science and knowledge and culture was a good garden, filled with Seussian exotica.
Jamaica was one of Britain's exotic outposts - surely seeds and trees and plants and cuttings had been brought back from here, to Kew. And conversely, those Brit exotics, the expats, had sought to grow here, in their exile, a garden in the image of Kew, a similarly enlightened, tastefully selected, display of the wonders of the natural world. Cinchona had actually started as a quinine plantation, Cinchona the tree from whose bark a cure to malaria could be extracted.
The fad faded, when more efficient sources of quinine were found. But the gardens remained. And granted, for as much as I prefer my nature natural, undisturbed, uninvaded, I appreciate the impulse that seeded and watered and maintained these grounds. The rolling lawns overlooked Kingston, a hazed concrete miasma that sprawled and wrapped against the sea, a few thousand feet below. Up here, the air was clear, wet-pure with forest, and the water too. There were villages below, but none above.
H was absorbed by the library, but I was restless now, stoned and inspired, so I took up my machet', and struck out, upslope, past the gardens, the beds of orchids, the cleared lawns and tended trees, heading for the top of the hill, up into the bush, where an unacceptably overgrown traillessness existed. "Yu wan bush to de top?", one of the gardeners had asked me earlier in the day, "Dat a go tek some time. Das hard bushin'. Dey ain no trail up deh.", suggesting that he could get me there, for $15. There had been hurricanes a few years back, and the paths to the top had since been overgrown.
As a general rule, I don't pay other people, to blaze my trails. I don't *want* other people, to blaze my trails. I'd rather err on the side of error. And so when someone tells me, that the top of some dinky *hill* is inaccessible, an impossible destination, without professional assistance, that gets my blood up. And so I hacked and slashed, dew-soddened, fell and tripped and struggled, fought up and through, impelled by an analogous drive, to that of the Colonials, the Brits, the Civilizers, to triumph, over that brute green. Because there is an implicit challenge, a natural defiance, in a landscape that hasn't been ascended. A Conradian moment.
I love the focussed intimacy, of being stoned in Nature. And it's even better, to be immersed in the tropical, with a machet'. I felt like a young samurai, learning The Path. The weeds and vines grew high, tangled overhead. Beyond, I caught glimpses, of the trivial top of the hill, a few hundred feet ahead. There were, truly, no trails - I skirted thornbushes, clamber-balanced the sogging rot of logs, when possible, fell, slashing, wet-strangled, and thorned, by the growth. I've never worked so hard, to get through a landscape - neither bogs, nor swamps, nor forest undergrowth, has ever opposed me, so intensely, so indifferently.
And blundered on, sway-staggering, sometimes slow-rolling, across the canopy of vines, and sometimes dropping down, penetrating the green, a 5 or 10 foot drop down to the earth, through the canopy, crawled within the root density, short-slashing with my blade, the stems before me, in what seemed like the right direction, struggling upslope, through the green, the leaved tangle, to the light. At one point, while grub-crawling, along the earth, I realized that there-scattered, among the vines, were trees, young saplings, conifers. They'd somehow persisted, despite the overhead smother of vines, were the young spawn, of foreign cedars, and pines, growing on and up, despite the inimical smother, of the local plants.
It was a literary moment, I realized that beyond post-colonialism, beyond the formal expulsion of the foreigner, was a certain struggling stasis, a balance of adaptability. The planters had withdrawn, had surrendered their fantasies of Victorian Gardening, to the resilience of the Jamaicans, themselves an introduced species, an heroic blend, of slaves, and Maroons, Spanish and Scottish, and crossover blends. Out of many, one people. And out of many trees, some optimals.
There had once been, a formal garden here, a Colonial product, a British reminiscence, abandoned once and again, and now preserved, for its touristical historical merits. Hurricanes had washed over, fallen the dominants, reduced them to rotting logs. And yet upsprung, slower-growers, than the vined swarm of local opportunists, conifers, cedar saplings, taking what sun they could, from the smothered canopy, so that now, 5-10 years later, they were still reaching, for the brink of the light, for that burst-opportunity of brightness.
They'd been brought in from Otherness, Other worlds, Other countries. And those unfit, those unadaptable, had already ceded, wilted, died. But yet remained a determined array, an upswelling, a persistence. Some of these itinerant drifters, had stood and held. They were brought here, from harder places, from denser competitions. And in an alien world, they held their own, and scrabbled for more, slight advantages...
I stalked H, on my return to civilisation, once I'd finally given up on reaching the peak, and had fought my way back through the overgrowth. I fell into a pit, a sudden drop into a tangled darkness of vines, a few feet from where the tended garden began. So when I did finally crawl onto the lawn, my ferality index was way up. I had a pretty good idea, that he'd be either napping, or drowsily reading where I'd left him, on the front porch, just inside the main door. So I walked softly, through the garden, crouched when I came up to the front windows, and stealthily half crept up to the door, blade in hand, still-soaked from the bush hack, like a rebel slave, bent on overthrowing the Tyrants of the House. It's surprising, just how easy, a whimsical insurrection might be.
I've read enough colonial accounts, to be able to imagine what was involved, for the invaders, the plantation-owners, the slave-holders to maintain dominance. Jack London and Joseph Conrad come first to mind, in terms of of stories about the hard grit and staunch bravery, backed by superior firepower and tactics that allowed a few brave Europeans to stand against the onslaught of waves of savages and natives. Karl Mays and the European conquest of the Americas come next.
From that perspective, Cinchona's Great House was pretty well designed. The landscape, the gardens have a certain military tacticality to them, clear lines of fire and funnelled approaches. The low rock walls of the immediate gardens would provide adequate cover, for a sniping crossfire defense. And the sloped ramparts interspersed with flat contours above and below the house would slow mass charges, expose the attackers to waves of fire. Who knows if the grounds were designed with that intent, or merely inherited a gardening aesthetic influenced by colonial theories of defense, or whether I'm just rambling paranoid and stoned. The fear was surely there - just as I sometimes play through the hypotheticals of how I'd react to a terrorist attack on DC, so must the Brits then, have at least occasionally pondered, how best they could defend themselves, from an insurrection.
And as a subjugate, to colonial dominance, how would I have responded? Would I not have been constantly searching for weaknesses, for tactical advantages? Why weren't there more rebellions, more attacks, more insurrections? And how easy would it have been, to stalk crouched, ducking under the windows as I approach the main door, machet' in hand, quietly stealthily, and then rush up the stairs, burst in, H napping by the door, as expected, unsuspected, startled by my arrival...
"Oh! I must've dozed off", he says, as I stand there dripping grinning. "Did you get to the top?", he asks. "No, it's crazy up there. I bushed hard, but the bush was harder. But it was pretty killer sweet", I tell him. It's getting cooler, sunset's coming, and now, slow-chilled from the stalk, I start to shiver. H is still drowsily warm. I want to drag him upslope, show him where I was, share the thrill of it. And I want to take a bunch of pictures, am suddenly full-on visual, want to catch it all. Dusk's lighting here is intense, I remember from last night, flowing reds and greens and glowing shadows.
Was it like this every night, back in the colonial days?
I lit and smoked, overlooking the garden, archaic vestiges, of Britannia, where the tides of Imperialism had washed and then receeded. The garden rolled out genteelely below me, close-cropped lawn and arboreal esotericae, absurd eccentricities of trees. A reminiscence of Kew Gardens, of that Victorian Glorification of the exotic, when the one of the best tributes to an expanding world of science and knowledge and culture was a good garden, filled with Seussian exotica.
Jamaica was one of Britain's exotic outposts - surely seeds and trees and plants and cuttings had been brought back from here, to Kew. And conversely, those Brit exotics, the expats, had sought to grow here, in their exile, a garden in the image of Kew, a similarly enlightened, tastefully selected, display of the wonders of the natural world. Cinchona had actually started as a quinine plantation, Cinchona the tree from whose bark a cure to malaria could be extracted.
The fad faded, when more efficient sources of quinine were found. But the gardens remained. And granted, for as much as I prefer my nature natural, undisturbed, uninvaded, I appreciate the impulse that seeded and watered and maintained these grounds. The rolling lawns overlooked Kingston, a hazed concrete miasma that sprawled and wrapped against the sea, a few thousand feet below. Up here, the air was clear, wet-pure with forest, and the water too. There were villages below, but none above.
H was absorbed by the library, but I was restless now, stoned and inspired, so I took up my machet', and struck out, upslope, past the gardens, the beds of orchids, the cleared lawns and tended trees, heading for the top of the hill, up into the bush, where an unacceptably overgrown traillessness existed. "Yu wan bush to de top?", one of the gardeners had asked me earlier in the day, "Dat a go tek some time. Das hard bushin'. Dey ain no trail up deh.", suggesting that he could get me there, for $15. There had been hurricanes a few years back, and the paths to the top had since been overgrown.
As a general rule, I don't pay other people, to blaze my trails. I don't *want* other people, to blaze my trails. I'd rather err on the side of error. And so when someone tells me, that the top of some dinky *hill* is inaccessible, an impossible destination, without professional assistance, that gets my blood up. And so I hacked and slashed, dew-soddened, fell and tripped and struggled, fought up and through, impelled by an analogous drive, to that of the Colonials, the Brits, the Civilizers, to triumph, over that brute green. Because there is an implicit challenge, a natural defiance, in a landscape that hasn't been ascended. A Conradian moment.
I love the focussed intimacy, of being stoned in Nature. And it's even better, to be immersed in the tropical, with a machet'. I felt like a young samurai, learning The Path. The weeds and vines grew high, tangled overhead. Beyond, I caught glimpses, of the trivial top of the hill, a few hundred feet ahead. There were, truly, no trails - I skirted thornbushes, clamber-balanced the sogging rot of logs, when possible, fell, slashing, wet-strangled, and thorned, by the growth. I've never worked so hard, to get through a landscape - neither bogs, nor swamps, nor forest undergrowth, has ever opposed me, so intensely, so indifferently.
And blundered on, sway-staggering, sometimes slow-rolling, across the canopy of vines, and sometimes dropping down, penetrating the green, a 5 or 10 foot drop down to the earth, through the canopy, crawled within the root density, short-slashing with my blade, the stems before me, in what seemed like the right direction, struggling upslope, through the green, the leaved tangle, to the light. At one point, while grub-crawling, along the earth, I realized that there-scattered, among the vines, were trees, young saplings, conifers. They'd somehow persisted, despite the overhead smother of vines, were the young spawn, of foreign cedars, and pines, growing on and up, despite the inimical smother, of the local plants.
It was a literary moment, I realized that beyond post-colonialism, beyond the formal expulsion of the foreigner, was a certain struggling stasis, a balance of adaptability. The planters had withdrawn, had surrendered their fantasies of Victorian Gardening, to the resilience of the Jamaicans, themselves an introduced species, an heroic blend, of slaves, and Maroons, Spanish and Scottish, and crossover blends. Out of many, one people. And out of many trees, some optimals.
There had once been, a formal garden here, a Colonial product, a British reminiscence, abandoned once and again, and now preserved, for its touristical historical merits. Hurricanes had washed over, fallen the dominants, reduced them to rotting logs. And yet upsprung, slower-growers, than the vined swarm of local opportunists, conifers, cedar saplings, taking what sun they could, from the smothered canopy, so that now, 5-10 years later, they were still reaching, for the brink of the light, for that burst-opportunity of brightness.
They'd been brought in from Otherness, Other worlds, Other countries. And those unfit, those unadaptable, had already ceded, wilted, died. But yet remained a determined array, an upswelling, a persistence. Some of these itinerant drifters, had stood and held. They were brought here, from harder places, from denser competitions. And in an alien world, they held their own, and scrabbled for more, slight advantages...
I stalked H, on my return to civilisation, once I'd finally given up on reaching the peak, and had fought my way back through the overgrowth. I fell into a pit, a sudden drop into a tangled darkness of vines, a few feet from where the tended garden began. So when I did finally crawl onto the lawn, my ferality index was way up. I had a pretty good idea, that he'd be either napping, or drowsily reading where I'd left him, on the front porch, just inside the main door. So I walked softly, through the garden, crouched when I came up to the front windows, and stealthily half crept up to the door, blade in hand, still-soaked from the bush hack, like a rebel slave, bent on overthrowing the Tyrants of the House. It's surprising, just how easy, a whimsical insurrection might be.
I've read enough colonial accounts, to be able to imagine what was involved, for the invaders, the plantation-owners, the slave-holders to maintain dominance. Jack London and Joseph Conrad come first to mind, in terms of of stories about the hard grit and staunch bravery, backed by superior firepower and tactics that allowed a few brave Europeans to stand against the onslaught of waves of savages and natives. Karl Mays and the European conquest of the Americas come next.
From that perspective, Cinchona's Great House was pretty well designed. The landscape, the gardens have a certain military tacticality to them, clear lines of fire and funnelled approaches. The low rock walls of the immediate gardens would provide adequate cover, for a sniping crossfire defense. And the sloped ramparts interspersed with flat contours above and below the house would slow mass charges, expose the attackers to waves of fire. Who knows if the grounds were designed with that intent, or merely inherited a gardening aesthetic influenced by colonial theories of defense, or whether I'm just rambling paranoid and stoned. The fear was surely there - just as I sometimes play through the hypotheticals of how I'd react to a terrorist attack on DC, so must the Brits then, have at least occasionally pondered, how best they could defend themselves, from an insurrection.
And as a subjugate, to colonial dominance, how would I have responded? Would I not have been constantly searching for weaknesses, for tactical advantages? Why weren't there more rebellions, more attacks, more insurrections? And how easy would it have been, to stalk crouched, ducking under the windows as I approach the main door, machet' in hand, quietly stealthily, and then rush up the stairs, burst in, H napping by the door, as expected, unsuspected, startled by my arrival...
"Oh! I must've dozed off", he says, as I stand there dripping grinning. "Did you get to the top?", he asks. "No, it's crazy up there. I bushed hard, but the bush was harder. But it was pretty killer sweet", I tell him. It's getting cooler, sunset's coming, and now, slow-chilled from the stalk, I start to shiver. H is still drowsily warm. I want to drag him upslope, show him where I was, share the thrill of it. And I want to take a bunch of pictures, am suddenly full-on visual, want to catch it all. Dusk's lighting here is intense, I remember from last night, flowing reds and greens and glowing shadows.
Was it like this every night, back in the colonial days?
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Zen drumming and the DinkiMini
The evenings are quiet, up in the Highlands of the Rio Grande. No lights - the closest village is two miles away, down the Road from Bath. The stars are bright, overwashed occasionally by clouds. We'd build a fire, watch the dusk darken as we sipped overproof rum mixed with Ting, listen to the night calls of the birds and insects, the soft rush of the wind, the river below.
Our cabin had a drum in one corner. I've never really played a drum, don't have any inherent percussiveness. But I pulled it out onto the deck, the 2nd evening, and started playing with it, as the sunset. It was a good drum, obviously hand-made - about a foot in diameter, and two feet tall. The drum surface was some kind of skin, wrapped round with a wreath of dried vine, rusting nails adorned with Red Stripe bottlecaps holding it in place.
The drum had resonance, vibrato. I didn't know how to hold it, so at first I played it flat, then balanced one edge on one foot, pivoting the drum, playing with its energy. Sound echoed out the bottom, I could feel the energy-tremble in my body. I could bounce the noise off the ground, the nearby forest, or absorb it into my body, depending on how I held the drum, how I pointed it.
"We must play our bodies as if they are musical instruments", my Zen Mistress had said, and I thought about this, as I fell in and out of beat, sometimes too simple, or too complicated, or just chaotically self-destructive. What did I know about drumming, aside from all the thousands of beats and tracks I've listened to over the years? And so I focussed on the sound of it, the impact of my hands, the difference between striking with fingertips, with knuckles, with palms, with the bases of my hands, left and right playing against each other, competing and then twinning, I'd slip into a beat, and then break it, my saboteur mind resisting the predictability of patterns.
I wanted drumness, felt stupid-awkward, but then as I played on, it came, the loops lengthening, patterns condensing, until I was beating hard, well, strong loops, 4 beats, then 8, then 16, mabe 32. I wasn't counting anymore, just playing rightness. Sometimes angry, sometimes hard - the blood flushed into my hands, I could feel the heat reaching down, coiling around my wrists. The energy, the work of it, felt good, hitting like I was fighting, like I was loving. I didn't care who heard anymore, the pattern heard. The valley heard. I heard. I wasn't making anything but noise.
And the noise was good. I don't know how long I played. I played again the next night, in the dark, sitting by the fire. It felt good. Peter was there, but I noticed that he didn't come into the circle of the fire, while I was playing. I looked up at him, nodded, kept playing. He nodded back, but still didn't come in. I stopped a few minutes later, "Dis a good drum.", I said. He agreed. "It's alrigh' dat I play?". He nodded. You never know where the taboos are, in different cultures.
And yet he still wouldn't come into the circle, until I stopped, and put the drum away. As if I'd violated some ruleset that he was too polite to inform me of. Or else had so blatantly called down the hellfire of the local spirits, that silently avoiding the taint of my blasphemy, was all he could do, to protect his own soul..."Dat not right, how you play", he told me a bit later. "Dass a ram drum. You play it tok-Tok tok-Tok", playing out the beat on the table we were sitting at. "Like a heartbeat." I said. "Yah, and den de ewe drum play. Dass a small drum, tight.". "Can you play?", I asked. I wanted to hear, how the drum was supposed to be played. "Naw man", waving me off, as if I was talking crazy talk. "Dey play de drum for de dinkimini, on Independance Day. Das when everyone come up here, sleep on de groun', and dance all night. De drummers come down from Hayfiel'", he said proudly, pointing up towards the Cunha Cunha pass.
Independance day was big, in Jamaica - celebrating the day when the Brits formally ceded Jamaica to the Jamaicans, back in the 1960's. Some Jamaicans described it with a certain rueful nostalgia, as if somewhat surprised that still decades later, long after the Brits had been thrown out, there remained the problems of poverty, corrupt politicians, wanton murders, drug lords. The first Independance Day had been an epic celebration, memorable like JFK's assasination, but positive. And to today, the celebrations continued.
"What's a dinkimini?", I asked, and Peter got up to show me. We were a few drinks into the evening by then. He did a slow shuffle-step, with some pretty serious ass-twitching, for a forty year-old man. I could imagine the beat, resonating through circles of happy people, kids onlooking, adolescents flirting awkwardly, after a long day of partying and feasting, in the firelight, while the drums beat on. This was definitely where I wanted to be, for independance day...
I told the drum story to my group of Zen Buddhists, after a meditation sitting. The inherent rules of Zen free up my narrative, let me end the story when I run out of details, without having to draw any explicit conclusions. Then I just have to wait out the slightly-surprised silence when I stop talking. Someone always picks up the thread, and runs somewhere interesting with it. That's one of the reasons I like this group.
And truth be told, it was pure Zen, while I was doing it, beating on the drum. I want one right now, and a wild-open valley in the tropics, under the stars, to be playing in. Peter was right, I wasn't playing it right. So many historical complexities had brought that drum there, so many coincidental contraptions had brought me there, to that intersection, the drum and I, that it couldn't possibly have been right. But it was...
Our cabin had a drum in one corner. I've never really played a drum, don't have any inherent percussiveness. But I pulled it out onto the deck, the 2nd evening, and started playing with it, as the sunset. It was a good drum, obviously hand-made - about a foot in diameter, and two feet tall. The drum surface was some kind of skin, wrapped round with a wreath of dried vine, rusting nails adorned with Red Stripe bottlecaps holding it in place.
The drum had resonance, vibrato. I didn't know how to hold it, so at first I played it flat, then balanced one edge on one foot, pivoting the drum, playing with its energy. Sound echoed out the bottom, I could feel the energy-tremble in my body. I could bounce the noise off the ground, the nearby forest, or absorb it into my body, depending on how I held the drum, how I pointed it.
"We must play our bodies as if they are musical instruments", my Zen Mistress had said, and I thought about this, as I fell in and out of beat, sometimes too simple, or too complicated, or just chaotically self-destructive. What did I know about drumming, aside from all the thousands of beats and tracks I've listened to over the years? And so I focussed on the sound of it, the impact of my hands, the difference between striking with fingertips, with knuckles, with palms, with the bases of my hands, left and right playing against each other, competing and then twinning, I'd slip into a beat, and then break it, my saboteur mind resisting the predictability of patterns.
I wanted drumness, felt stupid-awkward, but then as I played on, it came, the loops lengthening, patterns condensing, until I was beating hard, well, strong loops, 4 beats, then 8, then 16, mabe 32. I wasn't counting anymore, just playing rightness. Sometimes angry, sometimes hard - the blood flushed into my hands, I could feel the heat reaching down, coiling around my wrists. The energy, the work of it, felt good, hitting like I was fighting, like I was loving. I didn't care who heard anymore, the pattern heard. The valley heard. I heard. I wasn't making anything but noise.
And the noise was good. I don't know how long I played. I played again the next night, in the dark, sitting by the fire. It felt good. Peter was there, but I noticed that he didn't come into the circle of the fire, while I was playing. I looked up at him, nodded, kept playing. He nodded back, but still didn't come in. I stopped a few minutes later, "Dis a good drum.", I said. He agreed. "It's alrigh' dat I play?". He nodded. You never know where the taboos are, in different cultures.
And yet he still wouldn't come into the circle, until I stopped, and put the drum away. As if I'd violated some ruleset that he was too polite to inform me of. Or else had so blatantly called down the hellfire of the local spirits, that silently avoiding the taint of my blasphemy, was all he could do, to protect his own soul..."Dat not right, how you play", he told me a bit later. "Dass a ram drum. You play it tok-Tok tok-Tok", playing out the beat on the table we were sitting at. "Like a heartbeat." I said. "Yah, and den de ewe drum play. Dass a small drum, tight.". "Can you play?", I asked. I wanted to hear, how the drum was supposed to be played. "Naw man", waving me off, as if I was talking crazy talk. "Dey play de drum for de dinkimini, on Independance Day. Das when everyone come up here, sleep on de groun', and dance all night. De drummers come down from Hayfiel'", he said proudly, pointing up towards the Cunha Cunha pass.
Independance day was big, in Jamaica - celebrating the day when the Brits formally ceded Jamaica to the Jamaicans, back in the 1960's. Some Jamaicans described it with a certain rueful nostalgia, as if somewhat surprised that still decades later, long after the Brits had been thrown out, there remained the problems of poverty, corrupt politicians, wanton murders, drug lords. The first Independance Day had been an epic celebration, memorable like JFK's assasination, but positive. And to today, the celebrations continued.
"What's a dinkimini?", I asked, and Peter got up to show me. We were a few drinks into the evening by then. He did a slow shuffle-step, with some pretty serious ass-twitching, for a forty year-old man. I could imagine the beat, resonating through circles of happy people, kids onlooking, adolescents flirting awkwardly, after a long day of partying and feasting, in the firelight, while the drums beat on. This was definitely where I wanted to be, for independance day...
I told the drum story to my group of Zen Buddhists, after a meditation sitting. The inherent rules of Zen free up my narrative, let me end the story when I run out of details, without having to draw any explicit conclusions. Then I just have to wait out the slightly-surprised silence when I stop talking. Someone always picks up the thread, and runs somewhere interesting with it. That's one of the reasons I like this group.
And truth be told, it was pure Zen, while I was doing it, beating on the drum. I want one right now, and a wild-open valley in the tropics, under the stars, to be playing in. Peter was right, I wasn't playing it right. So many historical complexities had brought that drum there, so many coincidental contraptions had brought me there, to that intersection, the drum and I, that it couldn't possibly have been right. But it was...
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Kill the pig! Cut his throat!
We were walking up the road to Bath when we met the pig hunters. H had stopped to rhapsodize for a few minutes on the quality of road, the precision of the grade, the challenge of building into a tropical slope, the well-built stone bridges across myriad streams that ran downslope towards the Rio Grande valley, a few hundred feet below. Indulging his obesession wasn't particularly tiresome for me - we were in a beautiful place, ferns and vines cresting and tangling, jewel-dewed from the misty dawn, as sun and clouds sworled above us. We'd watched
the sun come up from our hut, a cloudy haze of brightening grey, and now, two hours later, the day was warming, the ramparts of the John Crow mountains visible, clouds still sometimes blurring the peaks.
Peter was cooking up a late breakfast of boiled green bananas and saltfish, and we'd gone for a morning saunter up-valley. I was scanning for food - bright-red pear-shaped happles hidden under broad leaves, a soft-grained watery sweetness to the white flesh, guava ripening from hard green to a lush yellow, pink-red on the inside, with yellow seeds, tart grenadillas, under bright green leaves of vines. H was rapturing about the road as only career civil engineers can.
Two men came around the road's curve behind us, with a lean straggle of dogs, a motley knee-high pack of terriers, short-haired, ribs showing. We'd had one such dog, growing up, a stray that my parents had adopted , while living in a small town in Malaysia, working for CUSO (the Canadian equivalent of the Peace Corps). They'd named her Chiku, because she was white with patches of brown, brown like the Chiku fruit, And she and Raimau (the cat) had shared M's pregancy, given brith in the summer, a few months before I was born. Chiku had flushed out two cobras that had decided to live under the house, distracted the deadly coil-weaves of quick death with her barks and feints while H set up the death-blow from behind, with a bamboo shaft. And they'd brought her back with them to Canada, where she'd affectionately tolerated my toddlerhood, let me brace against her as I learned to walk, stood guard maternally at the tops of stairs as a wandered. I'd been struck at how similar to Chiku, the local dogs were, until H pointed out that they were another colonial vestige, terriers brought over by the Brits, that had outlasted the sunset of the British Empire.
Ahh, but where were we? Ruminations on pets and history aside, we were being approached by two men with spears. Actually, we didn't yet know that they had spears - they were each carrying long, rough-hewn sticks, the upright end wrapped in cloth. "You stay at de Lodge?" one asked, after the usual pleasantries. "Yeah. Dis a beautiful place. Where you going?". According to the Rough Guide to Jamaica, the road disappeared within a mile or two, but we'd run across several references to a path that continued on, up to Corn Puss Gap, and then back down to Bath. We'd initially planned to bush/blaze that trail, instead of the Cunha Cunha Pass, so we were still curious about it.
"We goin huntin. For bush pig." I was immediately engaged - "How you hunt pig?", I asked. "De dogs find de pigs, and den dey chase one. When de pig get stuck, das when we kill 'im". Both men were lean, wiry strong. They weren't as open and friendly as most of the people we met, but it's likely that what they were doing wasn't completely legal. This being a National Park and all. Although the pigs were invasives, brought over by the Europeans. So I personally had no objections. Hell, I wanted to come along.
"When de pig trapped, him get angry. Das when its dangerous. Mebbe he come running, try to bite, or wid 'im tusk. Das when we spear 'im..." As he acted it out, holding the spear at the base, pointing straight out, short low jabs. Ok, I still wanted to come along, but was definitely going to hold back for the pig-killing bit. Maybe climb a tree, and take pictures...
"So how you make de spear?" I asked. They were still wrapped in cloth. "You take de point from a machet', an' wrap it tight to de shaf'". Easy enough. And a pretty vicious weapon. I'd been curious about what weapons the Maroons had used, in their battles against the British. The trails into this valley offered excellent opportunities for ambush, dense clustered steep slopes where a well-timed attack would decimate even a well-armed expedition, and the bush would allow the Maroons to fade out of sight within seconds. Bows and arrows , in combination with guerrilla tactics, would be devastating, but spears like these ones would be adequate. I would let the Brits blunder in far enough, for their retreat to be a long one. then study their expeditionary pattern for long enough to find the weak spots. And then once I'd slaughtered them, would put up a pretty little barrier of bamboo and corpses, to greet the next incursion...
I wanted to go with them, but all my gear was back at the cabin. And we were going to do a waterfall hike with Peter, after breakfast. I asked him about the pig hunters, as we ate - "Dey took my bes' dog dis morning, tief 'im from me yard!". As it turned out, those particular pig hunters hadn't - we ran into them that evening - they'd killed no pigs, but we had successfully found a waterfall. I was disappointed, because I really was looking forward to grilling up a hunk of fresh wild pig. And I felt sorry for the dogs, who looked scrawnier than ever. But Peter's dog wasn't part of the pack -
"So why is dis dog dat dem tief so special?", I asked him that evening. We'd already established that some other group of pig hunters had stolen his dog. "Because I train 'im. And I feed 'im up good. I gots de bes' dogs, 'cause I feed 'em all de time.". There was, arguably, some merit, to hunting with hungry dogs. But Peter clearly knew what he was doing, had, according to his accounts, once killed two pigs on one hunt, alone, and carried them both back to town, would bush up to and over the ridge of the John Crow Mountains, through trailless realms where one could wander lost for days...
There is an unfortunate schism, in North America, between the hunters, and the greens. They'd make excellent allies, in my opinion, but the formers consider the latters a threat to their traditional way of life, and the latters consider the formers murderers of sacred Nature. Bambi started it, I think. I came to my love of nature through the greens, but prefer hunters to developers. And have gone sufficiently feral, to appreciate the hunter's aesthetic, altho I still get twitchy, wandering through wildernesses, during hunting season.
So my compromise is, death to the invasives! And uncontrolled populations! Wild pigs and bamboo inhabit the former, predator-free herds of deer in Eastern forests, the latter. Arguably humans as well, but there are ethical complications there. Point being, next time I go, I'm totally going wild pig hunting in Jamaica...
the sun come up from our hut, a cloudy haze of brightening grey, and now, two hours later, the day was warming, the ramparts of the John Crow mountains visible, clouds still sometimes blurring the peaks.
Peter was cooking up a late breakfast of boiled green bananas and saltfish, and we'd gone for a morning saunter up-valley. I was scanning for food - bright-red pear-shaped happles hidden under broad leaves, a soft-grained watery sweetness to the white flesh, guava ripening from hard green to a lush yellow, pink-red on the inside, with yellow seeds, tart grenadillas, under bright green leaves of vines. H was rapturing about the road as only career civil engineers can.
Two men came around the road's curve behind us, with a lean straggle of dogs, a motley knee-high pack of terriers, short-haired, ribs showing. We'd had one such dog, growing up, a stray that my parents had adopted , while living in a small town in Malaysia, working for CUSO (the Canadian equivalent of the Peace Corps). They'd named her Chiku, because she was white with patches of brown, brown like the Chiku fruit, And she and Raimau (the cat) had shared M's pregancy, given brith in the summer, a few months before I was born. Chiku had flushed out two cobras that had decided to live under the house, distracted the deadly coil-weaves of quick death with her barks and feints while H set up the death-blow from behind, with a bamboo shaft. And they'd brought her back with them to Canada, where she'd affectionately tolerated my toddlerhood, let me brace against her as I learned to walk, stood guard maternally at the tops of stairs as a wandered. I'd been struck at how similar to Chiku, the local dogs were, until H pointed out that they were another colonial vestige, terriers brought over by the Brits, that had outlasted the sunset of the British Empire.
Ahh, but where were we? Ruminations on pets and history aside, we were being approached by two men with spears. Actually, we didn't yet know that they had spears - they were each carrying long, rough-hewn sticks, the upright end wrapped in cloth. "You stay at de Lodge?" one asked, after the usual pleasantries. "Yeah. Dis a beautiful place. Where you going?". According to the Rough Guide to Jamaica, the road disappeared within a mile or two, but we'd run across several references to a path that continued on, up to Corn Puss Gap, and then back down to Bath. We'd initially planned to bush/blaze that trail, instead of the Cunha Cunha Pass, so we were still curious about it.
"We goin huntin. For bush pig." I was immediately engaged - "How you hunt pig?", I asked. "De dogs find de pigs, and den dey chase one. When de pig get stuck, das when we kill 'im". Both men were lean, wiry strong. They weren't as open and friendly as most of the people we met, but it's likely that what they were doing wasn't completely legal. This being a National Park and all. Although the pigs were invasives, brought over by the Europeans. So I personally had no objections. Hell, I wanted to come along.
"When de pig trapped, him get angry. Das when its dangerous. Mebbe he come running, try to bite, or wid 'im tusk. Das when we spear 'im..." As he acted it out, holding the spear at the base, pointing straight out, short low jabs. Ok, I still wanted to come along, but was definitely going to hold back for the pig-killing bit. Maybe climb a tree, and take pictures...
"So how you make de spear?" I asked. They were still wrapped in cloth. "You take de point from a machet', an' wrap it tight to de shaf'". Easy enough. And a pretty vicious weapon. I'd been curious about what weapons the Maroons had used, in their battles against the British. The trails into this valley offered excellent opportunities for ambush, dense clustered steep slopes where a well-timed attack would decimate even a well-armed expedition, and the bush would allow the Maroons to fade out of sight within seconds. Bows and arrows , in combination with guerrilla tactics, would be devastating, but spears like these ones would be adequate. I would let the Brits blunder in far enough, for their retreat to be a long one. then study their expeditionary pattern for long enough to find the weak spots. And then once I'd slaughtered them, would put up a pretty little barrier of bamboo and corpses, to greet the next incursion...
I wanted to go with them, but all my gear was back at the cabin. And we were going to do a waterfall hike with Peter, after breakfast. I asked him about the pig hunters, as we ate - "Dey took my bes' dog dis morning, tief 'im from me yard!". As it turned out, those particular pig hunters hadn't - we ran into them that evening - they'd killed no pigs, but we had successfully found a waterfall. I was disappointed, because I really was looking forward to grilling up a hunk of fresh wild pig. And I felt sorry for the dogs, who looked scrawnier than ever. But Peter's dog wasn't part of the pack -
"So why is dis dog dat dem tief so special?", I asked him that evening. We'd already established that some other group of pig hunters had stolen his dog. "Because I train 'im. And I feed 'im up good. I gots de bes' dogs, 'cause I feed 'em all de time.". There was, arguably, some merit, to hunting with hungry dogs. But Peter clearly knew what he was doing, had, according to his accounts, once killed two pigs on one hunt, alone, and carried them both back to town, would bush up to and over the ridge of the John Crow Mountains, through trailless realms where one could wander lost for days...
There is an unfortunate schism, in North America, between the hunters, and the greens. They'd make excellent allies, in my opinion, but the formers consider the latters a threat to their traditional way of life, and the latters consider the formers murderers of sacred Nature. Bambi started it, I think. I came to my love of nature through the greens, but prefer hunters to developers. And have gone sufficiently feral, to appreciate the hunter's aesthetic, altho I still get twitchy, wandering through wildernesses, during hunting season.
So my compromise is, death to the invasives! And uncontrolled populations! Wild pigs and bamboo inhabit the former, predator-free herds of deer in Eastern forests, the latter. Arguably humans as well, but there are ethical complications there. Point being, next time I go, I'm totally going wild pig hunting in Jamaica...
Friday, February 03, 2006
On obtaining a bush machet'
There's a popular joke going around Jamaica right now, about a rural guy who decides to go to America to find work. Customs stops him at the airport, and asks what he's going to do with the machet' he brought with him. "I goan chop bush wid it!" he says, while gesturing with the blade.
Chopping bush. They still do a lot of that, up in the highlands. Pretty much every adult you see up there (women included) are carrying a blade. It's a beautiful tool, about two feet long, the blade darkens with age and use to a brown-black denseness, except for the edge, bright shine of sharpness, kept honed by use. The handle darkens as well, accumulating a patina of sweat and dirt, worn smooth. Over time, the blade slenders, sharpened back with a rough metal file, to keep the cutting edge.
When I told Tiger that we planned to go bushing, he said, "You need a bush machet'". I proudly pulled out my shiny new blade, and he informed that it wasn't a bush machet'. "Dat one's too heavy. You got to wear it down, sharpen it up". "How you do dat?" I asked. "Wid a file. You got to work de edge.". Tiger was cool. He ran Whitfield Hall, had rasta dreads, and a peaceful amiability. Cooked up some wicked vegetarian meals, and welcomed us with a pot of hand ground, hand roasted Blue Mountain coffee. I considered commissioning him to bush up my machet', but it sounded like a lot of work. "You got a bush machet'?", I asked, "Maybe we can trade - I give you dis one, and you give me a bush machet'".
H and I had come across a pile of old machet's, rusting beside a hut overlooking a field of thyme, scallions, christmas trees, carrots..., that had been hacked into a steep slope, a mile or so up a dirt path leading up to the head of the valley. The wooden handles had been stripped off or had rotted away, so all that was left was a thin frail metal shaft, thrown down and left to rust when the farmer had picked up the next new one. So I knew that new machet's had at least some value. And when Tiger's eyes lit up at my offer, I knew that he didn't feel like he was getting the bad side of the deal.
At this point, usually my concerns about being ripped off as an idiot tourist by a smooth-talking local would usually kick in. But I was up in the Highlands, away from the dense machiavellian cesspools of tourism-based intercultural exploitation of Kingston and the North Coast. No harrassmen' up here mon. And Tiger was legit. And I wanted a *bush* machet', not some shiny dorky new blade that I bought at a hardware store.
So the next morning, as we left Whitfield Hall, on a trek to the next ridge, and Cinchona, guided by Tiger's brother, Everton, we stopped to pick up a bush machet' from Tiger's house. It felt nice in my hand, a smooth swinging heft to it, as the three of us followed a winding dirt road through XXX, and then down a zugzwanging dirt trail past steep garden plots, braced against the roots of mango trees. down towards the Green River.
H didn't get a blade. Didn't want a blade, for whatever reason. I got so much pleasure, from wandering through the landscape with my bush machet' that I felt obliged to offer him turns with it periodically. But he rarely took me up on them. Which was quite honestly fine by me...
The blade got an adequate amount of use. I quickly learned that bushing wasn't zactly a walk in the park, and that even with a machet', a trail that was a few months overgrown was a slow, struggling hack. H and I had initially planned to try trekking the Vinegar Hill Trail - it showed up on old maps, but everyone had adamantly asserted that either it didn't exist, or that it was impassable. What bush we encountered was sufficiently arduous to take their word for it.
Chopping bush. They still do a lot of that, up in the highlands. Pretty much every adult you see up there (women included) are carrying a blade. It's a beautiful tool, about two feet long, the blade darkens with age and use to a brown-black denseness, except for the edge, bright shine of sharpness, kept honed by use. The handle darkens as well, accumulating a patina of sweat and dirt, worn smooth. Over time, the blade slenders, sharpened back with a rough metal file, to keep the cutting edge.
When I told Tiger that we planned to go bushing, he said, "You need a bush machet'". I proudly pulled out my shiny new blade, and he informed that it wasn't a bush machet'. "Dat one's too heavy. You got to wear it down, sharpen it up". "How you do dat?" I asked. "Wid a file. You got to work de edge.". Tiger was cool. He ran Whitfield Hall, had rasta dreads, and a peaceful amiability. Cooked up some wicked vegetarian meals, and welcomed us with a pot of hand ground, hand roasted Blue Mountain coffee. I considered commissioning him to bush up my machet', but it sounded like a lot of work. "You got a bush machet'?", I asked, "Maybe we can trade - I give you dis one, and you give me a bush machet'".
H and I had come across a pile of old machet's, rusting beside a hut overlooking a field of thyme, scallions, christmas trees, carrots..., that had been hacked into a steep slope, a mile or so up a dirt path leading up to the head of the valley. The wooden handles had been stripped off or had rotted away, so all that was left was a thin frail metal shaft, thrown down and left to rust when the farmer had picked up the next new one. So I knew that new machet's had at least some value. And when Tiger's eyes lit up at my offer, I knew that he didn't feel like he was getting the bad side of the deal.
At this point, usually my concerns about being ripped off as an idiot tourist by a smooth-talking local would usually kick in. But I was up in the Highlands, away from the dense machiavellian cesspools of tourism-based intercultural exploitation of Kingston and the North Coast. No harrassmen' up here mon. And Tiger was legit. And I wanted a *bush* machet', not some shiny dorky new blade that I bought at a hardware store.
So the next morning, as we left Whitfield Hall, on a trek to the next ridge, and Cinchona, guided by Tiger's brother, Everton, we stopped to pick up a bush machet' from Tiger's house. It felt nice in my hand, a smooth swinging heft to it, as the three of us followed a winding dirt road through XXX, and then down a zugzwanging dirt trail past steep garden plots, braced against the roots of mango trees. down towards the Green River.
H didn't get a blade. Didn't want a blade, for whatever reason. I got so much pleasure, from wandering through the landscape with my bush machet' that I felt obliged to offer him turns with it periodically. But he rarely took me up on them. Which was quite honestly fine by me...
The blade got an adequate amount of use. I quickly learned that bushing wasn't zactly a walk in the park, and that even with a machet', a trail that was a few months overgrown was a slow, struggling hack. H and I had initially planned to try trekking the Vinegar Hill Trail - it showed up on old maps, but everyone had adamantly asserted that either it didn't exist, or that it was impassable. What bush we encountered was sufficiently arduous to take their word for it.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
I glad I could make it
I was seven when I had my first real adventure. I climbed Blue Mountain. I was much too young. My family had ridden up to Whitfield Hall with another family* in a Landrover, forded a wide river, so high that the water came up over the tires, an adventure in itself, and driven up into the hills overlooking Kingston. Whitfield Hall was a vast sprawling mansion that we spent the afternoon and evening exploring, crawling through the dark attic, wandering from room to room, and exploring the grounds, while the adults sat and talked in the dining hall. There were rabbits and chickens and kittens, and once the sunset, it was unnaturally cold. I'd lived most of my conscious life in Jamaica, considered myself Jamaican, could climb coconut trees barefoot and twist off the nuts like a local, was an expert in beaches and waves and seashells and sunburns and lizards and snorkelling and tree climbing.
To climb Blue Mountain, you started early in the morning, 2 or 3 am, so you could reach the peak by sunrise, and be back down before it got too hot. It was an arduous trek - the two older girls were definitely going, but the younger brother, and my younger sister V were definitely not. V sulked petulantly over this, it violated her sense of justice that anything be denied her. I was careful not to exult over my slight chance at the peak - as the older sibling, I'd won a reluctant concession from my father, after a careful campaign - If I woke up when the others did, to climb the next morning, I could come along.
When the sky is clear, you can see Blue Mountain Peak from Kingston, where we lived. The mountain range runs east-west, forming the backbone of the island. Blue Mountain Peak is one among many, but as Jamaica (and the Caribbean)'s highest point, it held a clear aura of grandeur. It was one of the national points of pride that we learned about in school, along with the seven national heroes (from memory, Sam Sharpe, Marcus Garvey, Paul Bogle, Sam Bustamente, Nanny of the Maroons, mmm, and...ok, it was a long time ago. Maybe it was just five national heroes...), lignum vitae, mahogany, the doctor bird, the bauxite industry, the national anthem - Eternal Father bless this land / Guide us with thy helping hand / Keep us safe from Satan's power..., the Arawaks, the national motto - "Out of many, one people".
And I'd climbed mountains before. Well, not to the top. In Austria, we'd done day hikes with my father's family, up in the Alps. And in Canada, while visitting my mother's family, we'd been in snow. So I was ready. On top of that was the pure simple fact, that despite my age and smallness, I was unstoppably and infinitely capable of surmounting any challenge. As long as it didn't involve bees or army ants. So I was ready. I'm not sure whether I slept that night. But when the others started moving around, murmurring to each other, muffled flashlights, I climbed down from the top bunk and started getting dressed.
I knew that if I showed hesitation or uncertainty, I might be left behind. And so when my dad looked me in the eyes, asked if i really wanted to do this, I was assertively affirmative. I don't remember much of the hike. It was mostly in the dark. As the dawn greyed and then brightened, I remember a never-ending sequence of false peaks - "It's just around the corner", H would say. The others were ahead, out of sight. I believed him the first few times. When I'd walked as far as I possibly could, was completely exhausted, ready to sit at the side of the trail and wait for them to come back down, we ate some cheese, a bit of chocolate, and H carried me the rest of the way on his shoulders.
I remember much more the exultant sense of accomplishment, or grownness, than any real visuals from the peak. It's likely that I imagined a more dramatic experience of my first actual mountain peak. Like being able to see the whole world from the top, while golden angels hovered and danced and sang. As a kid, you're always climbing, trying to *grow*, get higher, win the next concession from those well-intentioned but clueless adults who don't think you're yet ready to use a machete, or drive a car, or fly a kite by yourself. So that's what climbing Blue Mountain meant to me. And admittedly, I especially savoured the fact that I'd done something that V was too young to do.
V missed out on this climb, too. I think we texted her from the top. It was pretty fing cold. I was surprised when we reached the top, had been expecting more arduousness. The accounts that I'd read on the internet suggessted a hard painful misery of a climb. And yes, it was a challenging walk, up the steep winding gullies of Jacob's Ladder, and we'd huddled shivering on the doormat of the ranger's cabin at the pass, sheltering from the wind for a half hour or so, but the closest thing to actual suffering was the wind and the cold. I hadn't packed too many thermal layers for a trip to the topics, so when we got to the top, and stopped moving, I got cold fast, shifted into hibernation mode on a bench in the half-wrecked shelter at the top waiting for the sun while H wandered around, excitedly anticipatory of a beautiful sunrise.
I'd wander out every now and then, just to show that i could handle it. But I knew I was going to be miserable until the sun actually started doing it's thing. Which was a much slower, less dramatic event than either of us were expecting. In the dark, the moon, or a swath of stars would crest through the blackness, as the wind ripped a gap in the clouds over the peak, and then it would darken again. When the sun actually came up, we didn't actually see it for awhile, but the wind-dwarved trees and bushes of the peak became more visible, greying and then greening, fading in and out of sight as the dense mist of clouds sworled past us.
I'd pulled my arms into my jacket and sweater, wrapped tight around my body, shivering and cursing as we walked between the viewpoints. The clouds above us pinkened, oranged, reddened, as they ripped past. I hadn't ever quite appreciated how liquid clouds are, in the wind - the peak reminded me of the Potomac River, of water butting and sworling at over and past a rapid, a hard rock. We'd get quick shots of the sun, visuals that would fade and blur within seconds, the landscape below would open up for an instant, and we could see all the way down to the sea, green hills and grey-white clots of roads and buildings, Kingston, the harbour, the Grand Ridge, a forested valley, and then the clouds would rush back in.
After an hour or so, a certain rhythmic pattern to the wind and clouds became apparent, until I could sense when the sun was about to rush back, and I'd yell for it, encourage it, wanting the warmth, the pleasance of it breaking through. We found berries in the bushes, strawberries, rastaberries, and when it finally brightened sufficiently, I took a nap in a sheltered pocket, warming finally.
H and I had the idea that it would be cool to walk part of the ridge. The initial plan had been to climb Blue Mountain with full packs, tents and camping gear, and then wander through the wild for a few days. I'd unfortunately somehow forgotten to pack the tent, but we had tarps and sleeping bags. Everyone we'd asked had said that there weren't any trails, but both H and I mistrust naysayers as wimps. Until we actually encountered Jamaican Bush. Drop either of us in your average North American wilderness, with modestly adequate gear, and we can probably get through it, trail or no. Neither of us had realized just how severe tropical wilderness is, until the day before, when we'd gone for a casual walk and ended up struggling desperately through a half mile or so of high grass and tangled ripping prickles. It took us a painful sweaty hour.
The humiliating part of that experience had been, that we weren't actually going through wilderness, just an apparently innocent overgrown pasture. When we finally brushed onto an actual trail, we realized that one doesn't just wander around in Jamaica's wild areas. I'd been concerned about stumbling onto ganja plantations, hostile locals, but hadn't considered the possibility that mere vegetation could be insurmountable.
So we'd scaled back on our trekking ambitions, had treated Blue Mountain as a day hike. There are historical accounts of walks along the Grand Ridge, so we explored the peak, under an intermittent sun, followed the fading blazes of an apparent trail through wet forests of stunted trees, gnarled and struggling with their burden of bromeliads and Spanish moss. Birds were calling to another in the warming dawn, and I played at echoing them. H speculated that they were singing about love. I suggested that they were marking their territory with brutal threats - "I'm going to find your nests, and crap on your eggs, peck them open and and dance joyously while ants feast on the shuddering fetusses (feti?) of your unborn young". The human science of ornitholinguistics has not yet attained a sufficient level of sophistication to resolve our difference of opinion.
We were heading to a nearby peak, maybe a 1/2 mile away, but the putative trail lost it's resolve as we staggered and swaggered through the brush. We may have reached the next peak, but the growth was too dense to provide an actual Aussicht, a view. Peaks are pointless without some kind of clear visual assertion of altitudinal dominance. And the bushwhacking across a relatively level landscape had been sufficiently challenging to convince both of us that hiking a few miles of the Ridge with full packs would be pure misery.
On the way back to the peak, we stopped to watch the clouds from an overlook, a tight patch of clear ground cut into the ridge just large enough for a tent. The clouds were hypnotic, dancing like wraiths. I was reminded of a dance that I'd seen a decade ago, in Ecuador, Atacames, on a beach where a ship full of slaves had washed ashore several hundred years prior, a region so tropically brutal, dense mazes of mangroves, that the survivors had managed, through a combination of their and the landscape's viciousness, to repel all attempts at outside conquest.
The culture had stayed pure, so pure that when I first arrived there, sleep-dulled by a long curl-thrash of an overnight bus trip from Quito, the first memory that I have of the area was of watching bats in the dawn, flying upriver, while several 10-year old boys mock knife-fighting with sticks. I immediately resolved not to piss off the locals. And then one night, after a half-day of drinking at a little palm-thatch hut on the beach, I the last gringo standing, the music shifted over, from cheesy reggae tropicalia, to a different drumbeat, and a few locals (who were black, slave-black, as opposed to your average Ecuadorian beige-brown blur of indio and criollo) danced, tall and lithe, limber, a dance I've never seen before or since, centered on a scarf, a swath of silk that the man held.
The fabric carried the dance, and the dancers echoed it. They never touched, never touched the scarf, but the scarf carried the dance, the desire, the passion. I watched this once, drunk false compare, under the background wash of soft waves, open sky of stars. And I knew I wasn't really supposed to be there. And even now, writing about it, I have no idea whether it really was anything, beyond the maundering drunken romanticism of a rhythmless gringo.
But regardless, it impressed me. And as the clouds sworled and wafted, dancing between the mountains and the wind, ethereal but densely present, washing past and through and over us, I remembered that dance. The hike back was uneventful, landscaes opened up before us that had been dark emptiness on the way up. At whitfield Hall, Tiger hand-roasted and hand-ground a pot of Blue Mountain coffee for us. We bought a few extra pounds to bring home, richly fragrant. Tiger's brother was going to walk us over to Cinchona, the next morning, and as we lulledly waited for dusk and dinner, I browsed through a pile of books on a table in the main room.
They were guest books, going back through thousands of visitors, back into the 70's. A historical archive. I got distracted, trading machetes with Tiger, but H found the book from 1982, that we'd signed on our first visit. "I glad I could make it. Kris Unger 7 years old.", I'd written in awkward cursive, and in Jamaican. This blog will likely contain dialogues where I slip into "Jamaican" grammar. It feels a bit awkward to write like that now, but this entry allows me to argue that my appropriation of local grammar is vestigially authentic. Jamaican was, for me at the time, a language among others. My sister V and I could talk the local patois so well that our parents (at least pretended) not to understand us. On this return trip, I slipped back into it, and to the credit of the locals, no one questioned why I was talking "Jamaican, like dem." . Out of many, one people.
V signed the guest book also. In somewhat wavering caps. She made no explicit claim to have climbed the mountain. But neither did she explicitly explain that she hadn't. So this entry is dedicated to her, for her Determination, for her Will, for her Constant Ruthless Struggle to Equal if not Best me, when we we both were young.
V, I have nothing for you but Respec! You're bigger and stronger and better than Blue Mountain. Climbing it would be for you like a firefly, illuminating itself. Effortlessly incandescent. I have no idea where that metaphor comes from. But burn on, sweet stubborn determined angel!
To climb Blue Mountain, you started early in the morning, 2 or 3 am, so you could reach the peak by sunrise, and be back down before it got too hot. It was an arduous trek - the two older girls were definitely going, but the younger brother, and my younger sister V were definitely not. V sulked petulantly over this, it violated her sense of justice that anything be denied her. I was careful not to exult over my slight chance at the peak - as the older sibling, I'd won a reluctant concession from my father, after a careful campaign - If I woke up when the others did, to climb the next morning, I could come along.
When the sky is clear, you can see Blue Mountain Peak from Kingston, where we lived. The mountain range runs east-west, forming the backbone of the island. Blue Mountain Peak is one among many, but as Jamaica (and the Caribbean)'s highest point, it held a clear aura of grandeur. It was one of the national points of pride that we learned about in school, along with the seven national heroes (from memory, Sam Sharpe, Marcus Garvey, Paul Bogle, Sam Bustamente, Nanny of the Maroons, mmm, and...ok, it was a long time ago. Maybe it was just five national heroes...), lignum vitae, mahogany, the doctor bird, the bauxite industry, the national anthem - Eternal Father bless this land / Guide us with thy helping hand / Keep us safe from Satan's power..., the Arawaks, the national motto - "Out of many, one people".
And I'd climbed mountains before. Well, not to the top. In Austria, we'd done day hikes with my father's family, up in the Alps. And in Canada, while visitting my mother's family, we'd been in snow. So I was ready. On top of that was the pure simple fact, that despite my age and smallness, I was unstoppably and infinitely capable of surmounting any challenge. As long as it didn't involve bees or army ants. So I was ready. I'm not sure whether I slept that night. But when the others started moving around, murmurring to each other, muffled flashlights, I climbed down from the top bunk and started getting dressed.
I knew that if I showed hesitation or uncertainty, I might be left behind. And so when my dad looked me in the eyes, asked if i really wanted to do this, I was assertively affirmative. I don't remember much of the hike. It was mostly in the dark. As the dawn greyed and then brightened, I remember a never-ending sequence of false peaks - "It's just around the corner", H would say. The others were ahead, out of sight. I believed him the first few times. When I'd walked as far as I possibly could, was completely exhausted, ready to sit at the side of the trail and wait for them to come back down, we ate some cheese, a bit of chocolate, and H carried me the rest of the way on his shoulders.
I remember much more the exultant sense of accomplishment, or grownness, than any real visuals from the peak. It's likely that I imagined a more dramatic experience of my first actual mountain peak. Like being able to see the whole world from the top, while golden angels hovered and danced and sang. As a kid, you're always climbing, trying to *grow*, get higher, win the next concession from those well-intentioned but clueless adults who don't think you're yet ready to use a machete, or drive a car, or fly a kite by yourself. So that's what climbing Blue Mountain meant to me. And admittedly, I especially savoured the fact that I'd done something that V was too young to do.
V missed out on this climb, too. I think we texted her from the top. It was pretty fing cold. I was surprised when we reached the top, had been expecting more arduousness. The accounts that I'd read on the internet suggessted a hard painful misery of a climb. And yes, it was a challenging walk, up the steep winding gullies of Jacob's Ladder, and we'd huddled shivering on the doormat of the ranger's cabin at the pass, sheltering from the wind for a half hour or so, but the closest thing to actual suffering was the wind and the cold. I hadn't packed too many thermal layers for a trip to the topics, so when we got to the top, and stopped moving, I got cold fast, shifted into hibernation mode on a bench in the half-wrecked shelter at the top waiting for the sun while H wandered around, excitedly anticipatory of a beautiful sunrise.
I'd wander out every now and then, just to show that i could handle it. But I knew I was going to be miserable until the sun actually started doing it's thing. Which was a much slower, less dramatic event than either of us were expecting. In the dark, the moon, or a swath of stars would crest through the blackness, as the wind ripped a gap in the clouds over the peak, and then it would darken again. When the sun actually came up, we didn't actually see it for awhile, but the wind-dwarved trees and bushes of the peak became more visible, greying and then greening, fading in and out of sight as the dense mist of clouds sworled past us.
I'd pulled my arms into my jacket and sweater, wrapped tight around my body, shivering and cursing as we walked between the viewpoints. The clouds above us pinkened, oranged, reddened, as they ripped past. I hadn't ever quite appreciated how liquid clouds are, in the wind - the peak reminded me of the Potomac River, of water butting and sworling at over and past a rapid, a hard rock. We'd get quick shots of the sun, visuals that would fade and blur within seconds, the landscape below would open up for an instant, and we could see all the way down to the sea, green hills and grey-white clots of roads and buildings, Kingston, the harbour, the Grand Ridge, a forested valley, and then the clouds would rush back in.
After an hour or so, a certain rhythmic pattern to the wind and clouds became apparent, until I could sense when the sun was about to rush back, and I'd yell for it, encourage it, wanting the warmth, the pleasance of it breaking through. We found berries in the bushes, strawberries, rastaberries, and when it finally brightened sufficiently, I took a nap in a sheltered pocket, warming finally.
H and I had the idea that it would be cool to walk part of the ridge. The initial plan had been to climb Blue Mountain with full packs, tents and camping gear, and then wander through the wild for a few days. I'd unfortunately somehow forgotten to pack the tent, but we had tarps and sleeping bags. Everyone we'd asked had said that there weren't any trails, but both H and I mistrust naysayers as wimps. Until we actually encountered Jamaican Bush. Drop either of us in your average North American wilderness, with modestly adequate gear, and we can probably get through it, trail or no. Neither of us had realized just how severe tropical wilderness is, until the day before, when we'd gone for a casual walk and ended up struggling desperately through a half mile or so of high grass and tangled ripping prickles. It took us a painful sweaty hour.
The humiliating part of that experience had been, that we weren't actually going through wilderness, just an apparently innocent overgrown pasture. When we finally brushed onto an actual trail, we realized that one doesn't just wander around in Jamaica's wild areas. I'd been concerned about stumbling onto ganja plantations, hostile locals, but hadn't considered the possibility that mere vegetation could be insurmountable.
So we'd scaled back on our trekking ambitions, had treated Blue Mountain as a day hike. There are historical accounts of walks along the Grand Ridge, so we explored the peak, under an intermittent sun, followed the fading blazes of an apparent trail through wet forests of stunted trees, gnarled and struggling with their burden of bromeliads and Spanish moss. Birds were calling to another in the warming dawn, and I played at echoing them. H speculated that they were singing about love. I suggested that they were marking their territory with brutal threats - "I'm going to find your nests, and crap on your eggs, peck them open and and dance joyously while ants feast on the shuddering fetusses (feti?) of your unborn young". The human science of ornitholinguistics has not yet attained a sufficient level of sophistication to resolve our difference of opinion.
We were heading to a nearby peak, maybe a 1/2 mile away, but the putative trail lost it's resolve as we staggered and swaggered through the brush. We may have reached the next peak, but the growth was too dense to provide an actual Aussicht, a view. Peaks are pointless without some kind of clear visual assertion of altitudinal dominance. And the bushwhacking across a relatively level landscape had been sufficiently challenging to convince both of us that hiking a few miles of the Ridge with full packs would be pure misery.
On the way back to the peak, we stopped to watch the clouds from an overlook, a tight patch of clear ground cut into the ridge just large enough for a tent. The clouds were hypnotic, dancing like wraiths. I was reminded of a dance that I'd seen a decade ago, in Ecuador, Atacames, on a beach where a ship full of slaves had washed ashore several hundred years prior, a region so tropically brutal, dense mazes of mangroves, that the survivors had managed, through a combination of their and the landscape's viciousness, to repel all attempts at outside conquest.
The culture had stayed pure, so pure that when I first arrived there, sleep-dulled by a long curl-thrash of an overnight bus trip from Quito, the first memory that I have of the area was of watching bats in the dawn, flying upriver, while several 10-year old boys mock knife-fighting with sticks. I immediately resolved not to piss off the locals. And then one night, after a half-day of drinking at a little palm-thatch hut on the beach, I the last gringo standing, the music shifted over, from cheesy reggae tropicalia, to a different drumbeat, and a few locals (who were black, slave-black, as opposed to your average Ecuadorian beige-brown blur of indio and criollo) danced, tall and lithe, limber, a dance I've never seen before or since, centered on a scarf, a swath of silk that the man held.
The fabric carried the dance, and the dancers echoed it. They never touched, never touched the scarf, but the scarf carried the dance, the desire, the passion. I watched this once, drunk false compare, under the background wash of soft waves, open sky of stars. And I knew I wasn't really supposed to be there. And even now, writing about it, I have no idea whether it really was anything, beyond the maundering drunken romanticism of a rhythmless gringo.
But regardless, it impressed me. And as the clouds sworled and wafted, dancing between the mountains and the wind, ethereal but densely present, washing past and through and over us, I remembered that dance. The hike back was uneventful, landscaes opened up before us that had been dark emptiness on the way up. At whitfield Hall, Tiger hand-roasted and hand-ground a pot of Blue Mountain coffee for us. We bought a few extra pounds to bring home, richly fragrant. Tiger's brother was going to walk us over to Cinchona, the next morning, and as we lulledly waited for dusk and dinner, I browsed through a pile of books on a table in the main room.
They were guest books, going back through thousands of visitors, back into the 70's. A historical archive. I got distracted, trading machetes with Tiger, but H found the book from 1982, that we'd signed on our first visit. "I glad I could make it. Kris Unger 7 years old.", I'd written in awkward cursive, and in Jamaican. This blog will likely contain dialogues where I slip into "Jamaican" grammar. It feels a bit awkward to write like that now, but this entry allows me to argue that my appropriation of local grammar is vestigially authentic. Jamaican was, for me at the time, a language among others. My sister V and I could talk the local patois so well that our parents (at least pretended) not to understand us. On this return trip, I slipped back into it, and to the credit of the locals, no one questioned why I was talking "Jamaican, like dem." . Out of many, one people.
V signed the guest book also. In somewhat wavering caps. She made no explicit claim to have climbed the mountain. But neither did she explicitly explain that she hadn't. So this entry is dedicated to her, for her Determination, for her Will, for her Constant Ruthless Struggle to Equal if not Best me, when we we both were young.
V, I have nothing for you but Respec! You're bigger and stronger and better than Blue Mountain. Climbing it would be for you like a firefly, illuminating itself. Effortlessly incandescent. I have no idea where that metaphor comes from. But burn on, sweet stubborn determined angel!
Cunha Cunha Pass
"So why do they call it the Cunha Cunha Pass?", H asked. We were sitting around a fire with Peter, president of the Bowden Pen Farmer's Collective. The mosquitoes had ebbed, the night was quiet, stars sharp against a cooling sky. The lurks and murmurs, insects and frogs and birds calling through the tropical forest, leaves and trees in the breeze, had faded to background, an aural patina.
"Because de Brits cunha find it!" Peter answered proudly. "De maroons would use de trees, so dat de soldiers couldna find de trail.". The path was clear now, we'd hiked in two days before, walked up from the town of Hayfield . Peter's collective had cleared the trail a few years back, cut back the bamboo and the brush, built bridges over the streams and small waterfalls that slid down the slopes, put up "rest-up" shelters, so that it was now an easy path, broad enough to be a road in most parts.
After a few days of "bushing" in Jamaica's highlands, we were very appreciative of good paths. But the Brits hadn't had this convenience, during their war with the rebel maroons. This area had been an insurgent stronghold
From the pass, we could see the John Crow mountains to our right, and the Blue Mountains to our left - both ranges were national parks. The slopes dropped into the valley of the Rio Grande, curving a few hundred* feet below us through green hills, lush jungle. Another easy hour or two's walk had brought us down to Bowden Pen
"Dis is de oldest trail in Jamaica", Peter claimed. H and I looked skeptically at each other. The Arawaks had been here first, before the Spanish, before the Brits, before the Africans that both had brought over to work the plantations as slaves. "Actually, we don't call them Arawaks anymore. They're Taino", I'd been informed a week earlier, by a sculpture artist from a university in Massachusetts - we'd been chatting over Red Stripes in the genteel lobby of the Terra Nova Hotel, in Kingston about plasma cutters and revivalism*- he was part of a study tour on Caribbean post-colonial identity and culture. "It's like calling an inuit person an eskimo.", he announced.
Well possibly, but all the Arawaks were dead, quickly wiped out by disease, after the Europeans arrived. So there isn't anyone left to feel culturally slighted. To my knowledge, the Taino had arisen much more recently, and spread across the Caribbean in the form of an appealling theme for tourists - day trips to see their cave art and rock paintings, archaeological shards, dioramas and bones in museums, and terra cotta simulacra available at gift shops.
I thought there might have been some cultural/genetic mingling between the Arawaks and the Maroons, but according to Peter, the Maroons had fought and killed any they came across. Which pretty much adheres to standard cross-cultural interaction - If a new tribe successfully wins a foothold on the coast, the prior inhabitants will move inland, occupying less desirable/accessible areas. Which is what happened when the Spanish settled in Jamaica - the surviving Arawaks moved inland. Which in Jamaica's case, is also upland - dominating the island is the Blue Mountain ridge, steep slopes of dense forest, tight valleys curled through the butressing hills.
Sensing our skepticism, Peter elaborated - "When de British come, de Maroons run away. Dey try to find a way tru de mountains. Dey try all de passes, but can't come tru..." He's gesturing with his hands, the flight out of Kingston, north into the hills, and then deflecting eastwards. We'd been hiking that general area, and it was true, there hadn't been any easy paths across the Grand Ridge, between here and Kingston. "When dey find the Cunha Cunha Pass, dey cross over, and live here." He concluded, smiling, and I understood his pride - this valley, this area, was where the Maroons, his ancestors, had first settled - the pass was the Maroon's Plymouth Rock, and Peter lived in sight of it.
There are moments of insight, when a landscape meshes with an understanding of how the land, the environment has shaped the culture, the history of a place, how it's shaped and affected the people. I haven't come up with a good pithy term for that yet, but as Peter lights up a cigarette, I can suddenly imagine what it must have been like for the Maroons, when the Spanish suddenly fled - they were free of their masters, and rather than stay and wait for the English and more tyranny, likely worse, since the Brits had pushed their current overlords into panicked flight, they headed for the interior, away from Kingston's harbour, North into the highlands, and when the mountains got too steep, the strongest, the most determined, kept pushing, scrambling and hacking their way up likely valleys until they dead-ended again, at a waterfall, a cliff face, a steep tangled morass of jungle.
And what must it have been like, to finally break through, across the Grand Ridge, and find an empty valley, shelter, refuge, freedom? The slaves became Maroons, warriors that decimated every military expedition that the Brits sent at them, swooped and raided the plantations along the coast, and then pulled back into their Zion. And Peter's smile still echos the pride, the determination of his ancestors, who made of this valley a new homeland, outlasted the British Empire, farming and hunting where his people had for centuries.
"Because de Brits cunha find it!" Peter answered proudly. "De maroons would use de trees, so dat de soldiers couldna find de trail.". The path was clear now, we'd hiked in two days before, walked up from the town of Hayfield . Peter's collective had cleared the trail a few years back, cut back the bamboo and the brush, built bridges over the streams and small waterfalls that slid down the slopes, put up "rest-up" shelters, so that it was now an easy path, broad enough to be a road in most parts.
After a few days of "bushing" in Jamaica's highlands, we were very appreciative of good paths. But the Brits hadn't had this convenience, during their war with the rebel maroons. This area had been an insurgent stronghold
From the pass, we could see the John Crow mountains to our right, and the Blue Mountains to our left - both ranges were national parks. The slopes dropped into the valley of the Rio Grande, curving a few hundred* feet below us through green hills, lush jungle. Another easy hour or two's walk had brought us down to Bowden Pen
"Dis is de oldest trail in Jamaica", Peter claimed. H and I looked skeptically at each other. The Arawaks had been here first, before the Spanish, before the Brits, before the Africans that both had brought over to work the plantations as slaves. "Actually, we don't call them Arawaks anymore. They're Taino", I'd been informed a week earlier, by a sculpture artist from a university in Massachusetts - we'd been chatting over Red Stripes in the genteel lobby of the Terra Nova Hotel, in Kingston about plasma cutters and revivalism*- he was part of a study tour on Caribbean post-colonial identity and culture. "It's like calling an inuit person an eskimo.", he announced.
Well possibly, but all the Arawaks were dead, quickly wiped out by disease, after the Europeans arrived. So there isn't anyone left to feel culturally slighted. To my knowledge, the Taino had arisen much more recently, and spread across the Caribbean in the form of an appealling theme for tourists - day trips to see their cave art and rock paintings, archaeological shards, dioramas and bones in museums, and terra cotta simulacra available at gift shops.
I thought there might have been some cultural/genetic mingling between the Arawaks and the Maroons, but according to Peter, the Maroons had fought and killed any they came across. Which pretty much adheres to standard cross-cultural interaction - If a new tribe successfully wins a foothold on the coast, the prior inhabitants will move inland, occupying less desirable/accessible areas. Which is what happened when the Spanish settled in Jamaica - the surviving Arawaks moved inland. Which in Jamaica's case, is also upland - dominating the island is the Blue Mountain ridge, steep slopes of dense forest, tight valleys curled through the butressing hills.
Sensing our skepticism, Peter elaborated - "When de British come, de Maroons run away. Dey try to find a way tru de mountains. Dey try all de passes, but can't come tru..." He's gesturing with his hands, the flight out of Kingston, north into the hills, and then deflecting eastwards. We'd been hiking that general area, and it was true, there hadn't been any easy paths across the Grand Ridge, between here and Kingston. "When dey find the Cunha Cunha Pass, dey cross over, and live here." He concluded, smiling, and I understood his pride - this valley, this area, was where the Maroons, his ancestors, had first settled - the pass was the Maroon's Plymouth Rock, and Peter lived in sight of it.
There are moments of insight, when a landscape meshes with an understanding of how the land, the environment has shaped the culture, the history of a place, how it's shaped and affected the people. I haven't come up with a good pithy term for that yet, but as Peter lights up a cigarette, I can suddenly imagine what it must have been like for the Maroons, when the Spanish suddenly fled - they were free of their masters, and rather than stay and wait for the English and more tyranny, likely worse, since the Brits had pushed their current overlords into panicked flight, they headed for the interior, away from Kingston's harbour, North into the highlands, and when the mountains got too steep, the strongest, the most determined, kept pushing, scrambling and hacking their way up likely valleys until they dead-ended again, at a waterfall, a cliff face, a steep tangled morass of jungle.
And what must it have been like, to finally break through, across the Grand Ridge, and find an empty valley, shelter, refuge, freedom? The slaves became Maroons, warriors that decimated every military expedition that the Brits sent at them, swooped and raided the plantations along the coast, and then pulled back into their Zion. And Peter's smile still echos the pride, the determination of his ancestors, who made of this valley a new homeland, outlasted the British Empire, farming and hunting where his people had for centuries.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
mmm...cutlasses
So far today, the big accomplishment has been a cutlass purchase. I feel so Pirateish! Not just one, but many. Well, two. I only needed one, but there was this other type of cutlass, with an irresistibly attractive shape - a broader blade, with a pronounced hook at the end - a flat surface, where the blade usually curves towards the tip, with a sharp point deriving, pointing in the opposite direction of the cutting edge. I asked the guy what this type of cutlass was used for, and he looked at me laughing, and said "You go buy dis ting, widdout knowing what its for?".
Hard to explain, to a local, that my appreciation for cutlasses is aesthetic. Actually, I thought that I was buying machetes. For the impending hike through Jamaica's highlands - Blue Mountain and John Crow National Parks. There may be a bit of bushwhacking involved. Not that I'm all that into hacking up tropical forests. But if the necessity presents itself, there is no better tool than the machete. And I never turn down a chance to add to my machete collection.
A remarkably functional device, a simple metal blade, 2-3 feet long, with a wooden handle. Highly effective at chopping things. And an array of designs has been developped, for specific purposes, around the tropical world. I'd be willing to bet that there are more people in this world who can recognize a machete, than a hammer. And more people who are effortlessly adept at wielding the former, than the latter. My casual machete collection consists of models from Fiji, Ecuador, Brazil, Jamaica, Mauritius, Bhutan, America, and now Britain. For whatever reason, Britain makes and sells machetes to Jamaica. Cutlasses (I have a receipt!). Not sure where that name came from - it's equally possible that that's what the Brits call them, as that the Jamaicans have held on to some historical archaism, a post-colonial term (what's the opposite of a neologism?).
And Jamaica was the starting point of my fascination with machetes. When I lived here as a kid, the most admirably heroic person in my world was our gardener, who in my memory used but one tool - his machete. My dad carried one too, kept it in the car. It was our access to fresh sugarcane, and sea almonds, and coconuts. The machete was an elegant solution, a powerful one, to essential needs.
In the end, the guy selling me the cutlasses relented, explained that I was buying a cane cutlass, for cutting sugarcane. "You use de point for digging, and uprooting", he said. Yah man. Tanks. Granted, no plans to get into sugar cane chopping on a serious scale, but now I've got the tool for it, if the accident happens...
Hard to explain, to a local, that my appreciation for cutlasses is aesthetic. Actually, I thought that I was buying machetes. For the impending hike through Jamaica's highlands - Blue Mountain and John Crow National Parks. There may be a bit of bushwhacking involved. Not that I'm all that into hacking up tropical forests. But if the necessity presents itself, there is no better tool than the machete. And I never turn down a chance to add to my machete collection.
A remarkably functional device, a simple metal blade, 2-3 feet long, with a wooden handle. Highly effective at chopping things. And an array of designs has been developped, for specific purposes, around the tropical world. I'd be willing to bet that there are more people in this world who can recognize a machete, than a hammer. And more people who are effortlessly adept at wielding the former, than the latter. My casual machete collection consists of models from Fiji, Ecuador, Brazil, Jamaica, Mauritius, Bhutan, America, and now Britain. For whatever reason, Britain makes and sells machetes to Jamaica. Cutlasses (I have a receipt!). Not sure where that name came from - it's equally possible that that's what the Brits call them, as that the Jamaicans have held on to some historical archaism, a post-colonial term (what's the opposite of a neologism?).
And Jamaica was the starting point of my fascination with machetes. When I lived here as a kid, the most admirably heroic person in my world was our gardener, who in my memory used but one tool - his machete. My dad carried one too, kept it in the car. It was our access to fresh sugarcane, and sea almonds, and coconuts. The machete was an elegant solution, a powerful one, to essential needs.
In the end, the guy selling me the cutlasses relented, explained that I was buying a cane cutlass, for cutting sugarcane. "You use de point for digging, and uprooting", he said. Yah man. Tanks. Granted, no plans to get into sugar cane chopping on a serious scale, but now I've got the tool for it, if the accident happens...
Friday, January 13, 2006
Jerk...and Boston Bay
So now that my neighbourhood 7-11 in Arlington Virginia is selling something called the Jerk Hot-Dog, i feel free to talk about the roots of Jerk. When you're a kid, most everything is surreal. Christmas, hot chocolate, the Tooth Fairy, and so on. When you're new to the world, and still learning the rules, realness is a much looser concept. You wake up in the morning, and whatever happens that day, is real.
Within the first few years of my life, I watched a house burn down, learned about Batman, drank Happy Pop, got on planes, and ended up somewhere elses, lived in languages I didn't understand, became a magician, collected skulls, and learned to swim. I slept for a year in an upper bunkbed, and several times rolled confidently out of it, sometimes floated effortlessly out the window, flew out across the landscape, and sometimes bounced resoundingly, painfully, off the thin-carpetted concrete floor. Only years later did I realize that the distinction between success and failure, between exuberance and pain, was actually a distinction between dreams and reality. I think that achieving this level of discernment, a relatively firm grip on what truths we hold to be self-evident, reality, as it were, is what's generally classified as "growing up".
But even then, four years young, Jerk Pork was real. As real as beaches. Boston Bay, to be specific. The two were intrinsically connected. We were living in Jamaica at the time. I had a few floating memories of life before Jamaica, but they weren't particularly explicit or credible. I remembered visiting camels in the snow, for example. A past life. Specific beaches had specific actions, experiences associated with them. At Doctor Beach, I'd step on urchins. Hellshire beach was always associated with beach umbrellas and picnic baskets. Negril had sea grapes and sea almonds, we'd split the latter open with a machete against a rock, delicately edge out the thin crescent of nut within. Half Moon Bay was an abandoned yacht, grounded on the reef, and snorkelling. Frenchman's Cove was a confluence, of stream and sea, flow and waves, fresh water and sea.
And Boston Bay was Jerk Pork. And vice versa. I don't remember ever having one without the other. Boston Bay was also the beach with the highest waves, in my memory - along most parts of the island's shoreline, the ocean lapped, curled and frothed, gently churned up delicate shells, pink sunsets, but at Boston Bay, the waves often felt higher, stronger, than I was. Worthy adversaries, that would sometimes knock me down, salt blinding my eyes, spitting sand, water rolling tumbling over me. The beach sloped up into a rampart of cliffs, sharp bubble curls of black volcanic rock that cut into my fingers, bit through my plastic flipflops, when I tried to climb them. Above the cliffs, a crest of green, arching away in both directions, encompassing the bay, the sandy froth of the beach fading into a Caribbean blue, water hazing grey against the horizon, the sky always a hot faded blue-white, in my memory.
But before we walked down to the beach, we always stopped to get some jerk pork. I think at the beginning, there was just one jerk pit, a square 10x10 foot plane of hot coals, ashed-over charcoal, smoke wifting up, heat radiating, blackened bones of branches splayed within the crumbling embers, the grey-white feathery dust. The pit was covered, a roof of rusting corrugated iron braced across hewn branches, against rainy days. The meat cooked on spits, above the heat. Jerk pork, and jerk chicken. Men tended the fire, the meat, shirtless, scruffed faces, obeying sacred rites, of when to rake the coals, or baste the meat, or through fresh wood in, or when to take the hungry audience's money. Others stood around, boys and younger children on the peripheries. I'm sure there was conversation, but I don't remember any dialogue. In Jamaica, banter was inherent. Not necessarily noticeable, or memorable.
We slipped in, my sister and I, white as we were, effortlessly, everywhere, it seemed. Maybe because we always had that child's gleam of awe, and natural acceptance, of things as they were. And talked patois like locals. Jamaica's a perfect place to raise a child. Or at least, was at the time. We could wander anywhere, talk to anyone, and get nothing but charm and respect, affectionate conversation. I didn't think the world could be any other way, until we moved away.
I think the Jerk pork came wrapped in a newspaper. The Daily Gleaner, of course. There was but one newspaper, in Jamaica. The comics page had Tarzan, and this friendly protean blob of blackness, that could magically transform itself into whatever shape was most likely to resolve the issue of the day. Carousel, pony, tiger, airplane, whatever. To the joy of the children. You knew that it was him, because whatever form he changed into, he kept his eyes, and happy smile. America might have Richie Rich, but Jamaica had whatever the hell this character was called. It might quite honestly have been called Blackie. I'd google the topic, but that would knock me off-track, and preclude my finishing this story.
Which is about Jerk Pork. Although I usually chose Jerk Chicken. We'd walk down to the beach, unwrap the package, and this hot spiced waft of fumes would hit me in the face. The chicken was painfully hot, suffused with spice, so much so that if I touched your fingers to your eyes, after eating, it would make me cry. So hot that it seared my lips, left a remnant taint itching my mouth for hours after. But sweet despite that. I think that my parents peeled off the skin. The meat was tender, moist, intense.
For some reason, we never had plates, and somehow always, it seemed, I dropped my chicken in the sand. Which required walking out of the shade of the cliffs to the edge of the water, to rinse the meat in the waves. A few grains of sand would still adhere, gritting between my teeth, but in my memory, it wasn't really Jerk until I'd dipped it into the sea, diluted the spice-bite of the meat with the salt of the ocean....
Within the first few years of my life, I watched a house burn down, learned about Batman, drank Happy Pop, got on planes, and ended up somewhere elses, lived in languages I didn't understand, became a magician, collected skulls, and learned to swim. I slept for a year in an upper bunkbed, and several times rolled confidently out of it, sometimes floated effortlessly out the window, flew out across the landscape, and sometimes bounced resoundingly, painfully, off the thin-carpetted concrete floor. Only years later did I realize that the distinction between success and failure, between exuberance and pain, was actually a distinction between dreams and reality. I think that achieving this level of discernment, a relatively firm grip on what truths we hold to be self-evident, reality, as it were, is what's generally classified as "growing up".
But even then, four years young, Jerk Pork was real. As real as beaches. Boston Bay, to be specific. The two were intrinsically connected. We were living in Jamaica at the time. I had a few floating memories of life before Jamaica, but they weren't particularly explicit or credible. I remembered visiting camels in the snow, for example. A past life. Specific beaches had specific actions, experiences associated with them. At Doctor Beach, I'd step on urchins. Hellshire beach was always associated with beach umbrellas and picnic baskets. Negril had sea grapes and sea almonds, we'd split the latter open with a machete against a rock, delicately edge out the thin crescent of nut within. Half Moon Bay was an abandoned yacht, grounded on the reef, and snorkelling. Frenchman's Cove was a confluence, of stream and sea, flow and waves, fresh water and sea.
And Boston Bay was Jerk Pork. And vice versa. I don't remember ever having one without the other. Boston Bay was also the beach with the highest waves, in my memory - along most parts of the island's shoreline, the ocean lapped, curled and frothed, gently churned up delicate shells, pink sunsets, but at Boston Bay, the waves often felt higher, stronger, than I was. Worthy adversaries, that would sometimes knock me down, salt blinding my eyes, spitting sand, water rolling tumbling over me. The beach sloped up into a rampart of cliffs, sharp bubble curls of black volcanic rock that cut into my fingers, bit through my plastic flipflops, when I tried to climb them. Above the cliffs, a crest of green, arching away in both directions, encompassing the bay, the sandy froth of the beach fading into a Caribbean blue, water hazing grey against the horizon, the sky always a hot faded blue-white, in my memory.
But before we walked down to the beach, we always stopped to get some jerk pork. I think at the beginning, there was just one jerk pit, a square 10x10 foot plane of hot coals, ashed-over charcoal, smoke wifting up, heat radiating, blackened bones of branches splayed within the crumbling embers, the grey-white feathery dust. The pit was covered, a roof of rusting corrugated iron braced across hewn branches, against rainy days. The meat cooked on spits, above the heat. Jerk pork, and jerk chicken. Men tended the fire, the meat, shirtless, scruffed faces, obeying sacred rites, of when to rake the coals, or baste the meat, or through fresh wood in, or when to take the hungry audience's money. Others stood around, boys and younger children on the peripheries. I'm sure there was conversation, but I don't remember any dialogue. In Jamaica, banter was inherent. Not necessarily noticeable, or memorable.
We slipped in, my sister and I, white as we were, effortlessly, everywhere, it seemed. Maybe because we always had that child's gleam of awe, and natural acceptance, of things as they were. And talked patois like locals. Jamaica's a perfect place to raise a child. Or at least, was at the time. We could wander anywhere, talk to anyone, and get nothing but charm and respect, affectionate conversation. I didn't think the world could be any other way, until we moved away.
I think the Jerk pork came wrapped in a newspaper. The Daily Gleaner, of course. There was but one newspaper, in Jamaica. The comics page had Tarzan, and this friendly protean blob of blackness, that could magically transform itself into whatever shape was most likely to resolve the issue of the day. Carousel, pony, tiger, airplane, whatever. To the joy of the children. You knew that it was him, because whatever form he changed into, he kept his eyes, and happy smile. America might have Richie Rich, but Jamaica had whatever the hell this character was called. It might quite honestly have been called Blackie. I'd google the topic, but that would knock me off-track, and preclude my finishing this story.
Which is about Jerk Pork. Although I usually chose Jerk Chicken. We'd walk down to the beach, unwrap the package, and this hot spiced waft of fumes would hit me in the face. The chicken was painfully hot, suffused with spice, so much so that if I touched your fingers to your eyes, after eating, it would make me cry. So hot that it seared my lips, left a remnant taint itching my mouth for hours after. But sweet despite that. I think that my parents peeled off the skin. The meat was tender, moist, intense.
For some reason, we never had plates, and somehow always, it seemed, I dropped my chicken in the sand. Which required walking out of the shade of the cliffs to the edge of the water, to rinse the meat in the waves. A few grains of sand would still adhere, gritting between my teeth, but in my memory, it wasn't really Jerk until I'd dipped it into the sea, diluted the spice-bite of the meat with the salt of the ocean....
