Terra Firma

On the sixth day out, we’d anchored in a protected bay on Norman Island, uninhabited except for a pirate-themed beach bar on one of its many coves. The island is considered to be the model for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. In spite of many intense searches over the centuries, no one has found the treasure chest that legend says was hidden there by pirates in the 18th century. A gold doubloon was found in one of the caves in 1972, the most recent sign of any such thing.

            

 There were three other boats anchored nearby but no sign of anyone  on them. The curved shoreline was fairly long, but stony and rough. I felt a strong desire to walk, actually walk somewhere on land. Terra firma. In almost a week, we’d been off the boat for three lunches, otherwise only to swim or snorkel. I announced that I would like to swim ashore.

David warned me not to touch any trees, as the extremely poisonous manchineel tree is common in the area. Its highly toxic sap was used by the indigeous people on the tips of poison arrows. Many early explorers of the Caribbean found out the hard way why the small green fruits of this tree were called “death apples.” Caroline pulled out a small book on tropical trees, and I noted that the manzaneel was a large tree with rough gray bark and small, shiny, alternate pointed leaves.

Caroline said it was too early in the day for her to swim, so she settled into reading Quakers in Conflict, about a 19th century split in Ohio between more traditional Quakers and a reformist branch that broke away.

As I let myself down the ladder, I saw a large, long gray fish lurking just off the stern of the boat.

            “That’s a barracuda, but don’t worry,” said Caroline; “they won’t bother you here.”

              Didn’t they call Sarah Palin a barracuda when she played basketball? But what do they know of barracuda in Alaska?

            I cautiously entered the water and the fish moved away.

Fortunately I could swim in the water sandals I’d bought for the trip, so I tucked my regular glasses inside my suit, and snorkeled a couple of hundred feet in, noticing schools of silvery minnows but few larger fish, as this was not part of the reef.

I left the mask and snorkel beside the bleached trunk of a fallen tree in a little clearing just off the shore. Only small portions of it were pure white sand. I’d read that the colorful herbivorous parrotfish actually make the sand. Vegetarians, they feed on algae that live inside the coral and nibble off and ingest tiny bits of it. Thus every grain of pure white sand has passed through the gut of a parrotfish.

I walked happily as far as I could along the beach until a rocky outcrop barred the way and then I ventured a little way back into the jungly forest. I had no idea what species any of the trees or plants were. They were not the showy flowering imports used for landscaping around fancy resorts. Higher up on the hills I could see small clearings with clumps of bristly cactus. No romantic swaying palms here.  Coconut palms, not a native species, were originally planted around the sugar plantations to provide cheap food for the slaves.

Further inland I noticed tens of thousands small red ants building a huge nest of reddish mud about six feet off the ground in the crotch of a large tree. It had gray bark and small, pointed leaves. Could it be a manchineel? And could these be fire ants? Aren’t fire ants from Florida, or Texas, or somewhere with a warm climate? Aren’t they called fire ants because of their burning sting? There were trails of ants coming from several directions, making their way in several lines up the tree trunk. Considering that the tree might be a manchineel (though its gray bark was pretty smooth) and the insects fire ants, the practical part of me overcame my interest in observing the natural world and I walked quickly away.

There was very little in the way of trash, flotsam, or jetsam on the beach, but the round plastic lid of a white bucket had washed up, making a possible sear on the stony ground. I settled down in the shade of a shrubby tree with round, leathery leaves, and put my feet in the water. Two Magnificent Frigate Birds soared overhead; Brown Pelicans startled me more than once as they crash-dived for minnows in the water nearby; and a Brown Booby landed on a rock, looking as foolish as the name suggests. Behind me, in the forest, a number of small birds were calling. I had no idea what they were.

It was very pleasant to be on land but i realized how very unfamiliar my surroundings really were. In Michigan I can identify almost any tree I see and most plants, but here nothing was identifiable except the landforms. The contours of Norman Island were gentle, relatively low hills, quite unlike the conical volcanic peaks of some of the surrounding islands. The colorful angular rocks exposed on the small cliffs were clearly sedimentary in origin; they’d been thrust up by nearby volcanic events so that the strata were almost vertical. They were stained in streaks of rusty red from iron leaching out and in some places black, probably caused by bacteria living on the iron.

I looked out at the Unity and waved to see if anyone was watching me. No response. After a while I swam over to the reef at the edge of the bay and added several new species to my list of corals and fishes. But I wanted just to sit still a little longer. When I returned to my spot in the shade, I found a conch shell, perfectly intact, about four inches long, just at the edge of the water. It was the only shell I saw. A nice little souvenir.

I was very happy to be on land after five days at sea. What joy seeing land must have been to early travelers crossing the ocean on voyages of many months. We are terrestrial creatures, after all, and as lovely and fascinating as the underwater world of the reef is, it is not our home. Only our modern equipment allows us to look in on it. The coral, fish and other marine creatures have evolved their myriad shapes, colors, sizes, defenses, and reproductive strategies safe under the sea, all without interference from plundering, polluting  Homo sapiens. Until relatively recently, that is.