The Blinding Stars
by Harry Buschman
The Blue Mountain chain runs like the
vertebrae of a starving animal down the
center of the island of Jamaica. As it runs eastward the peaks grow higher
until they reach Kingston and then drop off abruptly to the sea. The
mountains appear blue from the sea, but from the island itself they are a
dusty green thinning on top to a sterile gray.
The eastern peaks of these mountains are shrouded
in mist and fog while the
rest of the island bakes in tropical heat. The summit of the Blue Mountain
range is as cold and damp as the Scottish hills of Cromarty.
A rutted dirt road winds its tortuous way to
the summit, and though you're
within sight of Kingston you will have spent a good two hours getting up
there. You will look back to the west and see the entire island of Jamaica
change from green to gray, to blue and then into nothing at all. To the
north, only 90 miles away lies the island of Cuba and the natives say on a
clear day you can see it from the peak of Blue Mountain .... in Jamaica the
most improbable things are possible. It's strange, you will be more than 7400
feet above the sea. You won't expect that in the Caribbean.
On this single lane washed out road you will
pass nameless settlements
consisting of a store and two or three houses. Everyone will be black -- jet
black. Some will be Rastafarians with bolos strapped to their hips, but most
will be Anglicans and bear names like Mr. Livesey, Mrs. Templeton and Mr.
Keynes. Their children will go to school in starched uniforms. They have
acquired all the reserve of the British, but underneath they retain the
inborn warmth that only black people are blessed with. Whatever goes wrong
they will smile and say, "No problem," which is another way of saying,
"I
cannot cope with this problem, therefore it is not a problem."
A strange place indeed to celebrate the coming
of the New Year. My wife died
the previous summer and our daughter thought the trip and change of scene
would be good for me. She and her husband were teaching a class in marine
biology at Columbus Beach on St. Ann's Bay.
I stood alone on that beach at 11:59. The natives
say Columbus first set foot
in America here .... here at Columbus Beach. Above my head the black velvet
sky is studded with uncountable stars, each of them a different color. So
close above me -- so near I can almost hear them humming. The universe is
somehow close enough to take in my hands. "surely some revelation must
be at
hand" .... my first New Year's Eve without her.
Way out on the lagoon, tiny lights can be seen
on the coral reef. Conch
hunters hunting shells. It's illegal, but young boys with knapsacks patrol
the beaches daily from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios selling conches and gonja,
(the locally grown marijuana) to the tourists. They also beg to be adopted
and taken back to New York. "No problem, sir .... I will leave you at the
airport. I have friends in New York." It is not true, he has no friends
there
.... he knows no one. He is as foreign to the streets of New York as I am to
the streets of Kingston. He simply wants to get out of Jamaica.
What was I doing here .... 1500 miles from
home? Back home the parties my
wife and I once enjoyed were in full swing, the ball in Times Square was
descending .... a new year in swaddling clothes was shivering at the door. No
such celebrations in Jamaica. The white tourists were partying in isolated
enclaves, but the citizens have little reason to celebrate, the Jamaican
Dollar was worth twenty cents.
An island paradise in so many ways and an island
of ignorance in others.
Foreign corporations have been nationalized by a nation that has no concept
of what the world wants to buy. They commandeered the Alcoa Bauxite mines and
couldn't run them. They go on blindly making archaic light switches that
Leviton gave up on long ago.
The people, yes -- people are always the bottom
line. How can my heart not go
out to these people? In my personal grief on this lonely beach where
Christopher Columbus may, (or may not) have first set foot in the new world,
I am aware of a tragedy far deeper than my own. How can an island in the blue
Caribbean be a desert? A short walk inland from the coast the land turns bone
dry. In the barren fields inland one can find dying palms, emaciated cattle,
(each with its personal egret) and the skeletons of aircraft that couldn't
make the poppy run back to Colombia. When it rains, the water is absorbed
immediately and sinks far below the level where it offers moisture to
vegetation. Near the coast it is not absorbed at all, so it undermines
foundations and roads and then runs off to the sea, or lies in mosquito
infested pools.
Across St. Ann's Bay lies the land fill dump.
It burns night and day and at
times drops ash along the beach front. It is home to turkey vultures and
great white gulls. When the wind is easterly the smell gets into your
clothes, the water you drink and the food you eat. Tonight, however there is
no wind, no mosquitoes or gnats either and it's far more pleasant to sleep in
a hammock on the beach than in the tin roofed, concrete block cabins of the
fishing station.
Tomorrow, bright and early New Year's Day,
we shall go up into the Blue
Mountains. It will be bitter cold up there and we will dress in our New York
clothes. We will pass Diablo Canyon and the Hardwar Gap, we may have to fill
in the ruts of the road as we go and at the top we will probably see nothing
.... not until later in the morning when the fog clears.
It is there at the crest of the Blue Mountains within sight of the capital
city of Kingston where I'm told I may find the 'paradox.' At an altitude of
more than 7400 feet above the sea, sharp eyed people have found ancient
conches and coral there. The natives believe they have been brought there by
the Gods, therefore they are sold to the tourists at exorbitant prices. The
scientific explanation is that the entire island of Jamaica is the remains of
a cataclysmic volcano, and everything upon it once existed beneath the sea.
The concept is inconceivable to the people of Jamaica. With this thought in
mind, I sleep.
The next morning is bright and promising. Twelve
of us pile into the battered
Dodge van and head east to Ocho Rios. The shore road is still not patched
since the storm of last week, so we turn south away from shore and make for
Hardwar gap -- the fastest way to Kingston. If anything, the road through the
mountains is in worse shape than the road along the shore. We arrive in
Kingston about 10 a.m., gas up and head for the one lane dirt road that leads
to the crown of the Blue Mountains. Along this road, as promised, are the
little villages .... hardly more than extended families. The men grow sugar
or work on the coffee plantations. The women and children make baskets,
whittle wood, and try to sell us Bob Marley tapes.
At about five thousand feet the villages peter
out as though choked for the
lack of oxygen, and the mountains are left to shift for themselves. We have
to get out of the van occasionally to fill the road ahead of us, enormous
ruts, three feet deep or more finally make it impassable. We pull to a stop
fifty feet short of the summit and decide to hike on up from there. Heavy
rain has eroded the bald peak of Blue Mountain and there, protruding from the
vertical wall of a washout is my 'paradox'. The paradox of paradoxes. A
glistening white sample of stony coral in the shape of two dancers. It was
eroded by the sea long before it ever got here to spend ages at the summit of
the Blue Mountains. Another rain storm would have washed it away to be lost
forever in the tangled undergrowth below. It is a hard coral .... pure
limestone, more permanent than Michelangelo's "David." It was sculpted
in the
form of two dancers eons before the island of Jamaica was born. I wrapped it
carefully and with utmost tenderness I brought it home with me.
I think she would have loved it so it sits
on an honored place on the mantel
next to other things we thought highly of .... I am struck dumb with its
beauty every day. In our short life together we were no more than a tick in
its time. It shall remain beautiful forever. Long, long after I think it's
beautiful.
Copyright Harry Buschman 1997
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