Dominica (Doh-men-EE-kah) was our final port of call before heading back to the United States. Beauty radiates throughout much of the 290-square-mile island. It’s the youngest island of the Lesser Antilles and is actually still being formed by geothermic volcanic activity. This was in evidence the first afternoon, when we went to a thermal hot baths. This field trip was a particularly laid-back adventure, unlike many we’ve had previously. It felt like just what I needed. We started with a panoramic view of Roseau, the capital and by far its largest city, from the overlook known as Morne Bruce.
We then stopped at the Botanical Gardens, where we saw a variety of plants and trees as well as a caged Sisserou (aka, the Imperial Amazon) Parrot, Dominica’s national bird and an endangered species.
Next, we headed for Wotten Waven, a small village with fewer than 300 people, where we had close to an hour to enter five sulphur springs, that progressively got cooler.
After some locally grown fresh fruit, we dried off and headed back to our home, the mighty MV Explorer.
Sadly, this is where I learned that the port of Dominica, in spite of its beauty, had become the site of our ship community’s worst nightmare. Because my partner is one of two psychologists on board and because the other one had been on the field trip with us, we were met on the dock with news that a student, Casey Schulman, had been seriously injured in a boating accident. The word came not long after that Casey had been killed. What happened next was an incredible coming together of our shipboard community.
I’ll refer you to my partner’s blog because she has worked many hours with those most affected by the tragedy and has written an entry of hope and healing:
http://marysails2012.blogspot.com
I will say that I had known Casey briefly through a writing group for a global studies project and can say first-hand that we have lost a bright mind, kind heart, warm smile, and an exceptional young woman. We were lucky to have sailed with her, and anyone who met her, surely felt the same. Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time looking out, first at the island and then at the ocean. I’ve seen albatross, flying fish, spinner dolphins, and a whole lot of crystal blue salt water, as well as the sunset that night, which lacked nothing except the presence of one of our own.
I can only say that we think of islands as alone, because they are surrounded by water, but what I saw for the first time was that being surrounded by water is not only both dangerous and healing, being surrounded by water is an embrace. We are both alone and a community. We hold beauty and tragedy in the same mind and somehow, we reconcile its contradictions.
Knowing that many of you will hear about this from the news, I wanted to put out a reminder not to get lost in that aspect of it. I was reading a book recently that concentrated on the need both to live in a story and to stand back from it. The following quote is not just directed toward this need but also to honor a person who seemed capable of embodying and growing from these very contradictions. May she rest easy.
“Our current failure may lie right there; we have become addicted to facts. To feed our habit, we continue to make false choices between the familiar and the strange, the true and the untrue, the worthy and the worthless. We have lost the ability to both surrender to a story and separate ourselves from it, to live in both grief-stricken reality and the grace of imagination, to both wait for spring and wonder whether it will arrive (J. Edward Chamberlin, If This is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?).”
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