The Mountains or The Beach?

I was a rare and strange thing on the island of St. Croix. Not becasuse I was a single, young female but that I had come alone and from, of all unheard of places, Arkansas! Even more amazing and almost unbelievable, to so many of the “Yankee tourists” I met there, was the way I talked. The story about my one way ticket told in Arkie vernacular is especially entertaining, hillarious.

Fortunately, I have the ability to camophlage my accent. I'm something of an accent chameleon so I was able to turn what I heard from others right back at them and they had no clue that I was really a twangy southern girl from, what's that place again?, ArKansas? Our converstations could be normal and I didn’t have to experience people laughing at me becaue I was so funny. I had a good attitude about it however, and laughed with them.

I learned quickly that many people come to St. Croix from New York, New Jersey, and the North East US because this is where the bulk of their touism marketing was targeted and, apparently where there were plenty of people with the kind of money it takes to vacation in the Caribbean. I had never met people from that part of the country. I didn’t know anything about them except that there were obviously a lot of them.

I knew only a few people, growing up in Little Rock, who traveled. Some of my friends had family ski vacations or went to Mexico but my family did not. I always wished for travel but never knew where I really wanted to go until I was on my own and realized I could go anywhere I desired. When I thought about it I knew that I wanted to get to someplace warm and live on a beach or spend a lot of time traveling the tropics. I also had dreams of living in the mountains, the big ones. I thought I would enjoy a rustic outdoor lifestyle on a ranch in Wyoming or enjoy working around the ski industry so I could learn to ski and ski as much as I wanted. I had never been to the mountains and only once to Jamaica (my first plane ride, at age 18).

When I had made up my mind that I was going to leave Little Rock, the direction I took was easily decided because winter was coming and I was getting cold. I hate the cold and dislike the leafless and dreary colors of winter. I don’t want to shiver and can’t stand it when my feet are cold and nose is running. I had to go South!

I knew that making this move and dramatically changing my life was a huge and necessary step for me. I had no way of knowing its impact until I had done it and been gone for a while and was able to reflect on the lessons it taught me. I am still reminded of how much I grew and what I took with me, through my life until now, from my adventures. No one can learn from others what they themselves have from the experience of unfamiliar people and places. This is personal and, I learned from this entire experience, essential to understanding ourelves and others better. I encourage my own children to travel as much as they can. I have made certain that they have had vacations each year, even if they are short and not far away. They are always permitted to take trips with friends and grandparents. I’m introducing them to the idea of being exchange students and seeing Europe. We take field trips with friends when we can. I have seen in them, and had their teachers comment, that they are richer and wiser for all of their travels so far.

The best part about travelling is the knowledge of new places. This knowledge not only includes what is happening now but in the past. Everyplace has a past and St. Croix had an amazing story to tell. I believe the island's past had a lot to do with the disposition of it's residents. They seemed to have a manner which was very unlike that of the Southern black people that I was familiar with in Arkansas. Although they had similar histories of slavery and oppression, the Cruzans ownership and domination was much more involved and had a much older record than the African decendants of the United States. Their isolation and history shaped who they are.

St. Croix was first visited by the Spaniards, including Columbus in 1493. They found the islands inhabited by the Arawak and Carib natives but by 1596 had declaired the islands uninhabited. They had deemed the natives hostile enemies, enslaved, and eliminated them. The Dutch and the English settled on the East end and West end, respectively in the early 1600's but battled each other over ownership. England won and held it until 1650 when the Spaniards again arrived to lay claim to their island. That same year, the French took it from them and ten years later, the French governor of St. Kitts bought the island for his own personal retreat but gifted it to the Knights of Malta. In 1665 the French West Indian company bought the island and gave it the first proper colonial management it had yet seen and it flouished with over 90 plantations in operation producing tobacco, sugar, indigo, and cotton.

Around 1695, however, management of the island failed and the island was virtually abandoned until 1733 when the French government sold it to the Danish West India and Guinea Co. The Danes invited all nationalities to settle on St. Croix and there were many however the English prevailed, as did their language. The island had two productive and successful centuries with sugar cane as it's primary and lucrative export. This ended however, when the European grown sugar beet made the import of Caribbean sugar unnecessary and the plantations, along with all of their slaves, were abandoned by their landowners around 1848. Life was so difficult for the freed slaves that they rioted and burned most of the plantations and the West end city of Fredricksted in 1878. In 1917 the Dutch sold the island to the US for $25 million. The islanders managed to continue growing sugar cane on St. Croix until 1966. Their economy shifted with the oil and alumina industries moving in and providing jobs. These and tourism are the basis for their economy today. The people are called Virgin Islanders or West Indians.

This photo shows an abandoned sugar plantation mill located high on the side of a hill on St. Croix, the wooden portions of the windmill long ago decayed or burned. These are still scattered around the island, relics of another time. Some have been built into modern attractions such as restaurants and hotels. Most are overgrown and in remote and rugged areas. It took a four wheel drive to get to this one.