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Issue 27
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S P E C I A L F E A T U R E S |
| MEMORIES OF MONTSERRAT
by Carl Cohen
It was by no special plan that we came to Montserrat. My wife and I had visited most of the major islands of the Caribbean, and had almost invariably found them satisfying. But Montserrat remained to be explored and so, encountering an appealing advertisement for a villa there, we arranged by phone for its rental, and flew to Antigua and (in those days, long ago) in a small private plane to Montserrat.
We arrived late in the day; it was dark by the time we had been deposited at our villa, and it was not until the following morning that we woke to see the utter splendor of the island we had so happily bumped into.
Then as now, Montserrat was an island that catered to North Americans seeking to establish winter homes. There was one small hotel, nicely situated in a district called Olde Towne, but most visitors came to stay in their own villas, or in a rented villa owned by some northerner not in residence at the time.
So it was with us. Many of these villas (we stayed in several of them over the years) are quite lovely: almost all have pools, and are very well equipped and cared for, and most, because of the topography of the island, offer splendid prospects of the mountains and the sea.
I am a hiker, and Montserrat was, and is still, an island perfect for beautiful walks, and for some demanding hikes. It is an island small enough that one can come to know it pretty well, as I did, traipsing down to and around all the beaches on the western, Caribbean side of the island, and most of the cliffs and beaches on the Atlantic east. But my favorite walks were always into the mountains, up to the waterfall on the White River, through the bamboo forest, along Fairy Walk, and up and down the many lush valleys.
Montserrat is high enough to get substantial rainfall in the interior, and the water flows to the coasts through the valleys, in streams called “ghauts” – the word is of East Indian origin. [Here I interject a linguistic aside: the word “ghaut” (pronounced gut) is from the Hindi, ghat, meaning a pass of descent from a mountain; thus by extension it has come in India to mean also the mountains themselves.
The principal mountain ranges of what was once called southern Hindustan, are specifically named the Western and the Eastern Ghauts. In Hindi the word can also mean the path of descent to a river, with a temple or place of rest often established at its summit. Along the Ganges there are many ghauts. Thackeray writes, in his Roundabout Papers: “I wrote this remembering, in long, long distant days, such a ghaut, or river-stair, at Calcutta.”
Well, one can – and I did in days not long distant – make one’s way through the benign vegetation downward into one of the ghauts, and then follow the ghaut down to the sea. The way – it isn’t really a path, but it is not difficult to follow – will sometimes be entirely dry; even when flowing the water is never very deep. There are two ghauts on Montserrat of which I became particularly fond; one is called Bottomless Ghaut, the other, Runaway Ghaut.
Bottomless Ghaut runs down from the central hills to the northeast coast of the island; my introduction to it happened like this. A friend and I had set out from Davy Hill, in the north, walking southward along the central ridge. We came at last to an old, beautifully overgrown crater. We climbed down into it, and then up its eastern side. There we encountered a stream running eastward.
This stream had to flow to the ocean, of course, and we knew that we needed only to follow it to reach the sea – from which point we could make our way back to our car parked up on Davy Hill. But there was some risk, because we did not know what we would encounter as we followed the stream eastward and down.
IN THE NORTH, AND MANY CENTRAL PORTIONS OF THE ISLAND ALSO, THE BEAUTY OF THE HILLS AND SHORES IS AS GRAND AS IT EVER WAS
In fact, this became a most memorable walk; one that can be taken still, I believe, this terrain being beyond the northern edge of the volcano’s impact. (The volcano, centered at the southern end of the island, has devastated forests in the south; but in the north, and many central portions of the island also, the beauty of the hills and shores is as grand as it ever was).
In fact, as we walked eastward along that stream, we were obliged to take some small leaps down rocky falls, which would have made return on that same path exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. But all came out very well. The stream entered and became part of a much larger flow of water, which (we later learned, and will never forget) is formally known as “Bottomless Ghaut.”
Runaway Ghaut is on the west side, large and deep, running westward from the central hills of the island. In its higher reaches it flows through the jungle; lower down, as it nears the sea, it runs through the district knows as Olveston, a sweet and gently subdued region of the island in which there are now many superb villas. There is a natural fountain (where the ghaut crosses under the north-south road) at which one is encouraged to stop for a drink of the pure, cool mountain water.
Hiking down Runaway Ghaut is very safe but also exciting, because the vegetation (very well watered) is that of the rain forest, with many tropical trees of huge girth, their root systems a mass of buttresses and convolutions. And then, at the bottom, one comes to a tiny sand beach on the Caribbean, never having to share it with anyone else, of course.
On the cliff above Runaway Ghaut on its southern side, very near the sea, there was a piece of land whose purchase I once seriously considered. Before I could decide it was bought by a friendly English family, the Truman’s, who built a superb villa there, with a spectacular view northward along the Caribbean coast. The patriarch of that family is now either very old, or deceased, and I do not know who now owns (or rents) that charming villa on Runaway Point Circle.
The next ghaut to the south (whose name, if it has one, I never learned) serves as the southern boundary of what is called Runaway Point (the land between the two ghauts), and it is on that point that I bought property of my own, quite close to the Truman villa.
This too was an adventure of a lifetime, of the following sort. When I first came to the island I had purchased two adjoining lots high on that hill overlooking the sea. I subscribe to the view, expressed with tongue in cheek by a colleague of mine here at the University of Michigan, that one should seek to acquire not too much in the way of land – only the land adjacent to his own!
So I felt driven to acquire, as eventually I did but with even greater difficulty, the remaining two lots adjoining mine, on that hillside over the sea. The nameless ghaut next south from Runaway is the southern boundary of my property (now regrettably for sale), and it is down this stream that I walk, with never another soul in sight, to the very sweet little cove where it enters the Caribbean Sea.
BUT FOR MOST OF US, THE WATER’S EDGE, IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER OFFERS AN UNENDING AND ALMOST MYSTICAL ATTRACTION.
Coves are one of the special beauties of Montserrat, as of many Caribbean islands. Beaches fall, in general, into one of two large classes: coves, which are in some fashion contained by the surrounding terrain, and open beaches, which may extend for miles. Both can be lovely, and individual preferences vary, of course. But for most of us, the water’s edge, in one form or another offers an unending and almost mystical attraction.
Extended beaches are the signature blessing of some islands: Seven Mile Beach on Grand Cayman, the unlimited expanse of beach on Man o’ War Cay, in the Bahamas (and Bimini and other Bahamian islands as well). In temperate lands – for example, the beaches of southern Nova Scotia, and the long empty beach of the Otago Peninsula on the South Island of New Zealand – extended beaches are common, and offer two well recognized advantages: they rarely get crowded (except in places like Miami Beach and Fire Island), and they invite the long, long beach walk, like that on the beach at Inch, on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland.
I am not a runner, but who cannot love a long beach walk? Some walks of that kind are really special. My favorite, if I must choose, is the long, long beach on Cayo Costa Island, just north of the Captivas on the Florida gulf coast. Cayo Costa is almost entirely a Florida State park, and the miles-long beach there, on the protected waters of the gulf, has also developed, about a hundred yards off shore, a miles-long barrier sand bar, showing above water at low tide.
There and southward from there through the Captiva Islands to Sanibel, the shelling is also quite wonderful. The shallow waters of the Gulf encourage the growth of mollusks of every description, and they accumulate especially on those long beaches where human passage and inspection is only occasional.
But for me, the ideal seashore is a cove, nestled within the arms of surrounding hills. That is the kind of beach found quite perfectly on Montserrat. As one moves northward up the Caribbean Coast from Lime Kiln Bay, a small cove just north of the volcano’s “exclusion zone,” one encounters one cove after another, some very small, some with water pouring into them from the mouth of a ghaut, some of moderate size – and almost all largely empty most of the time. Three of these coves deserve special mention.
Most nearly perfect, and surely not to be missed is Woodlands Beach. Woodlands is a district in which there are many beautiful private villas, much like Olveston lying just to the south of it. The road to Woodlands Beach winds down from hills and finally reaches a black sand cove, not terribly small, whose symmetry and splendor is really quite remarkable. Local residents enjoy it also; evening gatherings on that beach are not rare. But the water is so perfectly clear there, the sand so fine and clean, the tropical vegetation that seems to hang above one as one swims – all combine to make this nearly the ultimate in beaches of the cove variety. It isn’t the very most perfect – I’ll get to that one shortly.
North of Woodlands a short way one comes to very sweet cove called Bunkum Bay, just under the village of St. Peters, then to a broad cove called Carr’s Bay, and then to Little Bay, which was long the center of the local fish trade. One could buy the fish filets, or steaks, freshly cut right behind the beach, when the local boats came in. There was, however (and there probably is still) a danger in this.
The fish are caught in the waters just to the west, between Montserrat and the small, perfectly round, uninhabited island of Redonda, beautiful to see from the deck of a villa high up in Olveston or Woodlands. But (for reasons never fully explained to me) some the fish caught near Redonda are poisonous; it seems that they feed on some stuff that is truly dangerous to mammals. If there is serious doubt in the minds of those preparing the fish for market, bits of the fish will sometimes be given to other animals to determine, in the light of the outcome, whether that fish is fully safe.
But Little Bay has been much changed since the eruptions of the volcano, far to the south, in the late 1990s. Pyroclastic flows from the volcano eventually forced the evacuation of the southern portion of the island; the capital, Plymouth, had to be abandoned. Many southern residents left the island; others have moved north, to the fertile areas around Little Bay, where tenacious Montserratians are building, valiantly and very intelligently, a new infrastructure for the island, whose interim capital is the village of Brades.
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| And furthest north on the Caribbean side is a delightful cove called Rendezvous Bay, to which access was very difficult in the days before the eruption. I made my way, some years ago, to the top of the northern hills that surround Rendezvous Bay, and then climbed down what was at that time a very steep track, to a beach unusual in Montserrat because of its color: it is the only white sand beach on the island. Black sand is typical in these volcanic islands, and can be just as fine and every bit as lovely as the white.
White sand can be blinding in the bright sun, but it does not become as hot to one’s bare feet. A plan to build a small boat marina at Rendezvous Bay has long been discussed. That will be very fitting because, with the loss of the port at Plymouth, protected anchorage for small boats has not been easy to come by in Montserrat.
On the Atlantic side the surf can be fearsome. But the waters on the Caribbean side of Montserrat, in those lovely, protected coves, are simply marvelous for swimming, for boating, for recreation of every sort. And the coves themselves are nothing less than idyllic.
ANOTHER COVE BEACH DESERVES MENTION HERE…THE MOST PERFECT OF THEM ALL. IT IS NOT ON MONTSERRAT…BUT ON THE ISLAND OF DOMINICA
Another cove beach deserves mention here, as I promised: the most perfect of them all. It is not on Montserrat, however, but on the island of Dominica, far to the south, between Guadalupe and Martinique.
I report it because I know that even on Dominica, very much larger than Montserrat, with a population about ten times that of Montserrat today, only a few are even aware of the existence of the small cove, on the southeastern (Atlantic) side of the island, called Bord la Mer.
One takes the road south from Rosalie, to the village of Riviere Cirque. (French names are common on Dominica because of the French occupation long ago; but the island is English (and Carib Indian) speaking. Some residents do retain familiarity with what is called the “patois,” but that is not much admired). In Riviere Cirque one finds a winding track that can be driven about a mile downhill.
Then, after parking in a small field, one must walk (for about half an hour) on a narrow trail, with many switchbacks, down to the sea. And there, at Bord la Mer, is the cove that is perfection itself. Small but not tiny, it is wrapped by coconut palms on low hills; it enjoys some surf (depending on the winds of that day), and is blessed by sand sweetly fine and black as jet. A few giant boulders provide a shelter if wanted.
Through the beach there runs, near its southern limit, a mountain stream, fresh and cool as it meets the sea. Almost certainly you will be alone when you visit Bord la Mer. But you will be so entranced that you will wish that all your friends and family were at hand at that moment to share it with you.
The mysteries of Dominica are greater even than those of Montserrat. But there is no end to the mysteries of Montserrat, either; I will never have the opportunity to explore them all. Montserrat was and, in spite of the pains of the volcano still is, the queen (or, being small, the princess) of the Caribbean islands.
She is more beautiful than words can say, with residents so kind and so gracious that I would move there in a heartbeat – if only I could move my university with me. The verdant land on which I had planned my second home remains spectacularly as it was; but I can only visit now, and bite my lip with longing and regret. View Carl's Listing here.
Author : Carl Cohen is a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan where he has been a member of the faculty for 53 years. Carl’s phone number in Michigan is 734-665-0090.
 Email : Carl Cohen
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