How would one know?

Our correspondent landed in

Grenada as I was born; this

he tells us merrily, in his

first published travels. It

would be some 21 years be-

fore I got there, not know-

ing at the time that our

footsteps were so much as

intersecting, walking Grand

Anse toward St George's, as

the children played in the

silent sea. Some of my fav-

ourite, sweetest pictures,

I took with my earliest M,

of their splashing in the

tide as if to wake it up;

and it's my guess that he

did, too, with probably a

iii-f model. But he was in

Grenada as a landfall in a

Leeward Islands checklist

in his post-war travels in

the Caribbean; and I was

there because a rowing mate

in freshman crew had plant-

ed dreams of the island in

my mind, as we would haul

back up to Commons for our

dinner after dark. Travels

follow from affections al-

most as bananas succeeding

themselves upon the branch,

re-enacting flowerings. 

Did I know what to expect?

Yes, but what's it like?

Well, it's light, like con-

fetti. It falls out of the

sky and blows about in the

wind. It's terribly cold,

and when it settles it re-

sembles cassava or mashed

potatoes. Your feet leave

marks on it as though you

were treading on sand, and

you can make balls of it,

or even snowmen. It is so

heavy it sometimes breaks

the branches of trees. It's

deep and crisp and even ...

I'm sorry. I don't get it,

maan. I don't get it at all.

Not what it's really like.

Sir Patrick Leigh-Fermor, DSO, OBE

The Traveller's Tree

  A Journey through the Caribbean Islands

New York Review Books, 2011©

i - iii  Tom Barker