St. John

I spent last week on St. John, in the United States Virgin Islands. I had a wonderful time, but not without some ambiguity. Future posts will celebrate the naturalist wonders to be found by this bug-savaged (some kind of no-see-um made the mosquitos look like pikers) amateur naturalist, but this introduction attempts a wider view. Yes, reference to my last post about Thoreau staying home intended.

Most of St. John is a National Park and thus protected from some of the pressures of development. But paradises are always embattled: St. John hasn’t been a virgin in a very long time. The very fact that that sections of it are undeveloped — albeit full of the ruins of the past, including grim slavery — attracts more development.

On our second day, I took a morning walk down to Fish Bay, and was surprised by this:White-tailed deer were introduced in the 1930s. (A Park Ranger said they were already smaller than mainland average; dwarfism is a large animal response to the confines of islands.) Goats, donkeys, pigs, chickens, all of whom have left the confines of the yard, now run feral, the hogs in particular a threat. The introduction of mongooses, which I will detail in a later post, was a disaster. There are some 400 species of trees found on the island, the great majority of them non-native. After slavery was outlawed in 1848, the sugar industry tanked; islanders tried cattle, and citrus fruits, and coffee, and chocolate. There’s even a boabob tree on the island. St. John, like all the Virgin Islands (excepting the coral Anegada) is the peak of a submerged mountain chain. At 20 square miles, it’s a mess o’ steep, with plunging valleys, locally called guts, that rush stormwater (and soil, and pollutants) down into the sea. Speaking of pollutants, oxybenzone in our sunscreen helps to kill coral reefs.A view of Reef Bay, within the National Park, and only accessible by foot or boat. Picture perfect. Outside the Park, however, it’s more like this, which is still a step above house-littered St. Thomas:The house the nine of us had for the week (lower far right) was on the market for $5 million (and it was ALL about the view and location, for the construction was iffy), although this nearby Xanadu on Difflit Point put us in our place:The Ranger who led the Reef Bay hike answered a question about what islanders grew now with: “tourism”.