The Blazing Stars

The Blue Mountains run like the spine of a starving animal down the center of Jamaica. They reach their highest point near Kingston and then drop off abruptly to the sea. The peaks of these mountains are shrouded in mist and fog while the rest of the island bakes in tropical heat. The summits of the Blue Mountain range are colder and damper than 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'll have spent a good two hours getting up there. You 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 Cuba, and they say on a clear day you can see it from the peak of Blue Mountain. It's strange to be more than 7400 feet above the sea. You don't expect that in the Caribbean, but in Jamaica the most improbable is possible.

On the single lane, washed-out road, you pass little towns consisting of a store and two or three houses. Everyone is black -- jet black. Some are Rastafarians with bolos strapped to their sides, but most are church-going Anglicans and bear names like Mr. Livesey, Mrs. Templeton, and Mr. Keynes. Their children go to school in starched uniforms. They have acquired all the reserve of the British, but underneath they retain the special warmth that is only given to black people. Whatever goes wrong, they smile and say, "No problem."

A strange place indeed to celebrate the New Year. My wife had died the previous summer, and our daughter thought the trip and the 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.

At 11:59 p.m., I stood on that deserted beach, where the natives say Columbus first set foot in America ... only to find it occupied and others there to greet him. At that hour the velvet sky was studded with uncountable stars so close above me -- so frighteningly near you could almost hear them humming. "Surely some revelation must be at hand" ... my first New Year's Eve without her.

Across the lagoon, tiny lights could 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." He has no friends there ... he knows no one. He would be as foreign to the streets of the city as I would be. 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 party 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 failure in others. Foreign corporations have been nationalized by a nation that has no concept of what the world will buy. They commandeered the Alcoa Bauxite mines and couldn't run them. They go on blindly making light switches that Leviton gave up on long ago.

The people, yes -- it always bottoms out to the people. 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 arid. In the barren fields, 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 could offer moisture to vegetation. Near the coast it is not absorbed at all. It undermines foundations and roads and then runs off to the sea or lies in festering pools.

Across St. Ann's Bay lies the landfill 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 is unbearable. 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 on New Year's Day, we shall go to 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 shovel in the ruts in the road as we go, and at the top we will probably see nothing ... not until late in the morning after the fog clears.

At the crest of the Blue Mountains within sight of the capital city of Kingston is where, I'm told, I may find the paradox. More than 7400 feet above the sea, sharp-eyed people have found ancient conches and coral. The natives believe they have been brought there by the Gods; therefore they are sold at exorbitant prices. The scientific explanation eludes them to this day. The idea that the entire island of Jamaica is a remnant of a cataclysmic volcano, and everything upon it once existed beneath the sea is incomprehensible to the people of Jamaica. With this thought in mind, I sleep.

The next morning was bright and promising. Twelve of us piled in the battered Dodge van and headed east to Ocho Rios. The shore road had still not been patched since the storm of last week, so we turned south away from shore and made for Hardwar gap, the fastest way to Kingston. If anything, the road through the mountains was in worse shape than the road along the shore. We arrived in Kingston about 10 a.m., gassed up, and headed for the one-lane dirt road that leads to the crown of the Blue Mountains. Along this road, as promised, were the little villages ... hardly more than extended families. The men grew sugar or worked on the coffee plantations. The women and children made baskets, whittled wood, and sold Bob Marley tapes.

At about 5,000 feet, the villages petered out as though choked for the lack of air, and the mountains were left to shift for themselves. Occasionally we had to get out of the van to fill the road ahead of us as enormous ruts, three feet deep or more, made it impassable. We pulled to a stop fifty feet short of the summit and walked to the top. Heavy rain had eroded the bald peak of Blue Mountain and there, protruding from the vertical wall of a washout, was the 'paradox'... the paradox of paradoxes. A glistening white sample of stony coral in the shape of two dancers. It had been eroded by the sea long before it was ever left 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 was a hard coral ... pure limestone, more permanent in shape than Michelangelo's "David". It had been sculpted in the form of two dancers long before the island of Jamaica was born. Aeons before my wife and I were born. With utmost tenderness and care I brought it home with me.

She would have loved it, but I must see it for her. It has an honored place on our mantel next to other things she prized. 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 you and I think it's beautiful.