Month: February 2023

From where Sam and I get off the bus, it’s about an hour walk to Hog Island’s second beach. Andrew and I have also walked there from Stella’s school after dropping her off in the morning. We have driven a rental car with Andrew’s sister and family, parked it where the road curves away towards Lance aux Epines, then walked the remaining forty minutes through Mt. Hartman to the beach. Each trip is different.

The first time we walked there, Andrew and I paused frequently for using binoculars and a camera. We passed roaming cattle, attended by cattle egrets. This part of Grenada is arid, with cactus plants and agave and leguminous trees. A tropical mockingbird filled a tree with its everything song. We admired the heavy bills and long tails of two smooth-billed ani’s perched on a power line. We saw little ground doves and eared doves and zenaida doves, but no Grenada doves. The wind was whipping whitecaps into the water, so we skipped swimming. We were in exploration mode. From second beach, we kept going to the beach where Roger’s Bar serves up a big party on Sundays. There was a protected harbor for the boating crowd and a midden of conch shells. Since it was Friday, we were alone with two guys running a small bar. One of them sold us two coconuts, which he opened at the top with a machete and stuck in straws for us to drink the salty-sweet, slightly viscous coconut water. He directed us to a trail through the mangroves as a shortcut back to the bridge.

Two weeks ago with family, we carried snorkel gear and were lucky enough find perfect conditions. There was only a scant breeze, and the water was clear and relatively calm. Underwater, we found a large seagrass bed filling the area in front of the beach. Most of the fish were along the rocks and beyond them, where coral hosted them. Some of us swam back with sea urchin skeletons—plentiful on the shallow sea floor and more delicate than eggshells—cradled in our hands. Behind the beach was a clearing with a partly covered plywood bar and benches and evidence of many small campfires. We sat there to eat our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cheese-flavored crunchy snacks.

Last week, Sam and Andrew walked out there, mostly for fishing. They followed a footpath down along the mangroves under the bridge where it meets Hog Island. The water was low enough for them to walk partway across the strait. Sam caught two barracudas, long and pointy-faced. After photos, he released them, careful to avoid their razor teeth.

Now Sam and I are back under that bridge. He re-assembles his fishing rod, which he has broken down for the bus ride. I watch him expertly replace the reel, thread the line up the rod, then tie a particular knot to attach the snap swivel. He chooses a lure and snaps it in place. The water is much higher today, he observes, and wades just around the edge of the mangroves.

While he fishes, I read The White Woman on the Green Bicycle. It’s a novel of Trinidad and belonging and unraveling and complicated love of people and place. I can see and taste so many of the Caribbean details—frigate birds, chadon beni herb, rum, traffic, the dialect, the heat, the rhythm of the place. I can feel the complicated loves. I keep glancing up to see Sam, casting the lure far out and reeling it back in his own rhythm.

When he’s ready to move on, we walk onward towards second beach. I am carrying Andrew’s backpack, heavy with water and a hammock and snorkel gear and books and peanut butter sandwiches, which honestly don’t appeal to either of us today. Sam has the day off school, and this excursion was my idea. It is hot. Even the stiff wind does not cool us. We walk in silence.

Reaching the beach, we see the whitecaps. Even from shore, the water looks turbid, but having dragged Sam out here, I am determined to try snorkeling. I sink into the waves by the rocks and swim out. Not only is the water opaque with sediment, chunks of seagrass and other detritus cling to my arms and face. I turn and swim back across to the beach. Now we are equally thwarted and grumpy. I change into dry clothes that I will rapidly soak with sweat. The walk back to the bus is the antithesis of whatever mother-son bonding I had envisioned.

And then we are pressed against each other in an oven-hot bus, without the usual windows or air conditioning. And then we are back in our little house. And then I am immediately leaving to pick up Stella from school. I walk back along the sidewalk, then down the walkway to Grand Anse Beach, my usual route.

Today though, the water is higher than I have seen it, filling the section of narrow sand I need to cross to get down to where the beach widens. Waves crash on the sea wall and backflip into white spray. I stow my phone in the small dry bag I carry in my backpack and pull off my sandals and wade through the waves. By the time I get to Stella’s school, my outer clothes have partly dried in the warm wind, but I am still a soggy-looking mom who really needs an air-conditioned nap.

Here we are in Grenada. We are trying to live here in some kind of real way, and we are just as human as we are at home. I keep thinking of the decal on the back of one bus, quoting Bob Marley: Who Feels It Knows. I think about how a small island can be all kinds of experiences. I think about the complicated loves.  

The water is clear today, so I walk to Pandy beach with my prescription snorkel mask, which has turned out to be an excellent investment. At the water’s edge, I wet the mask then spit into it to prevent fogging. I pull the rubber straps over my head. It suctions to my face. My teeth hold the snorkel mouthpiece with jaw muscles slightly sore from yesterday’s snorkeling. I lean into the waves.

Facedown, I become aquatic. The cool water wraps around me. I inhale through the tube, adding buoyancy, and float like a starfish over rocks and coral. Along the coral, the first to greet me are dusky damselfish, small brown roundish fish as abundant as sparrows. Then I might see sergeant majors—another damselfish but light-colored, with five black vertical stripes and a splash of yellow across the back. Also common, but they look like they feel important.

A yellow-tailed parrotfish swims past me, longer and chunkier than the damselfish. Each of its scales is outlined, covering it with a prominent diamond pattern of warm browns. It wriggles into a crack between coral. Down below, I see a Northern ocean surgeon—a wide fish, smoothly pale, edged in blue with a black line curving up the cheek. I hold my breath and dive. A whitish fish with a horizontal yellow stripe hovers low near the sand. It flips two long barbels down from its chin and scrubbles in the sand for tiny invertebrates to eat, which is how I know it’s a yellow goatfish.

I surface, blowing out my snorkel, keeping my face underwater. There goes a small group of French grunts, fine yellow and blue stripes swirling across their sides. There is a bluehead wrasse, thin and decorated in colorblocks of blue, black-and-white, then green. There is a slippery dick wrasse, patterned in green and pink and two horizontal full-length stripes. There is a banded butterflyfish, a showy fish even just in its black-and-white stripes. Each fish rivets me. The rest of the island recedes.

We actually saw a lot of the island over the past week. Andrew’s parents and his sister’s family  visited, bringing memories of Grenada with them. His parents lived here in the late 1970’s; it’s where Andrew was born. We rented cars and drove one day up the West coast to where they lived in Gouyave. Another day, we drove up the East coast to Sauteurs, where they returned for a summer when Andrew was nine years old. They held up the lens of their experiences as we explored, and we made new memories at Hog Island, St. George’s, Diamond Chocolate Factory, La Sagesse Beach, Belmont Estate, and Bathway Beach. Each place, a story layered on stories.

Right now, though, there is no other place but these crevices, this many-textured coral. I float here. My arms move gently. It is quiet. The fish go about their business. I do not ever need to surface.

To my delight, I spot a juvenile yellowtail damselfish wiggling close to the coral. Less than two inches, these babies are black covered in iridescent blue dots. It looks like they are lit from within—little Lite-Brite toys—because each spot glows. They are radiant. I watch until it ducks out of sight.

Another favorite swims by just before I turn for shore. From the top, I see a short horn protruding above each big eye. The fish would look stern if not for its pointy-face, smoochy lips. From head-on, this fish is a triangle. It is white, covered in the brown, reticulated pattern that gives it the name honeycomb cowfish. The wide-based body tapers into a skinny tail that fans at the end. It looks like it was designed by a committee. This honeycomb cowfish is just larger than a regulation American football, and a smaller one swims behind it. I follow until they seem to melt away into deeper water.

Then I raise my head. I look for the sea almond tree with a particular branch swooping to the side, and I swim towards it. If I align myself just beyond the tip of that branch, I have a clear path through rocks and coral. I watch underwater until I see the black sand rippling towards the beach, then I plant my feet. The waves push me onto the pebbled sand. Around my cheeks are creases from the snorkel mask. The snorkeling, the fish, the stories, and the people have all left lingering impressions.