About eight months before the world turned upside down in 2020, Beth and I experienced our third trip to our number one favorite travel destination, Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands. Playing out July 1st through the 8th, 2019, my journal mentions it including one of the very best days of my life.
Imagine us – liberated from our normal 2019 workaday world, where we certainly have no room for complaint. COVID-19 and masks? Such concerns were unimaginable. So, as you can see wading into this, those days represent a form of bliss which is compounded in the aftermath.
Of course, if you are familiar with me and this Rare Air series, you know we’ve been dwelling upon even earlier memories captured on the island. Our second trip, which ran July 5-12, 2017, ended a month-and-a-half before Hurricane Irma hammered it. Despite our desire to return even sooner, recovery was still underway at the end of 2018 when we booked our 2019 stay. Returning, we were hoping for the best.
Among our findings: Within weeks of our 2017 visit to the flourishing Caneel Bay Resort, its dazzling hustle and bustle involving flush tourists and vibrant, vivacious locals doing their work had become an abandoned ruin; so it remains. Also, the stunning Asolare Restaurant overlooking Cruz Bay where we celebrated Father’s Day in 2016 with our kids, is now but a memory.
Being there, seeing the present while also steeped in visions from the past, we felt the missing parts, and valued what remained even more deeply. Experiencing the Saint John Festival parade and fireworks felt surreal already, even without knowing what would come in 2020.
These travels through time have given us so much. Taking everything in, it’s clear that every wondrous moment in nature contains infinite miracles. Compared with the past, every manifestation of life on our planet is a death-defying survivor. Existence is perilous, momentous, and quite possibly in its final gasp, at any point.
Observing and engaging with it, the state of being becomes sublime.
Please stop back soon for more Rare Air.
Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands, July, 2019
Rare Air Episode 47, Part 1: Third Time’s the Charm
Rare Air Episode 48, Part 2: Ancient Eruption
Rare Air Episode 49, Part 3: Omniscience, Part One
Rare Air Episode 50, Part 4: Omniscience, Part Two
Rare Air Episode 51, Part 5: Heaven on Earth
Rare Air Episode 52, Part 6: Return Trip to Waterlemon
Rare Air Episode 53, Part 7: Underwater at Waterlemon Cay
Rare Air Episode 54, Part 8: Fish life on the cay
Rare Air Episode 55, Part 9: Snorkeling Hansen Bay
Rare Air Episode 56, Part 10: School of bar jacks
Rare Air Episode 57, Part 11: Sunset over Bordeaux Mountain
