Wading In

When I first emailed my uncle Chris in July of 2023 to inquire about joining him and my aunt on a family trip to St. John the following spring, he replied with a “Hell yes!” But he issued a warning: “You may have unleashed a future bevy of communications.” He added a crying-laughing emoji, but I knew he was serious. My aunt Laura chimed in: “We’ve released the Kraken.”

Although they’re quick to make light of it, my uncle and aunt’s love for St. John is long-standing and very real. They’ve been coming to the small, lush Caribbean island — which is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands and home to Virgin Islands National Park — from Houston since 1987. In those pre-internet days, they took a gamble, booking a (very) belated honeymoon trip based on a few photos in a travel book. After a week of snorkeling together in the glass-blue waters of Caneel Bay, they were hooked.

This trip, with my wife, Maggie, and me, would be Chris and Laura’s 13th venture to St. John. I knew that given their passion for the island, my aunt and uncle would be ideal guides. Soon, we’d gotten my dad and my mom (Laura’s sister) on board, and as promised, Chris was blasting out spreadsheet itineraries. In family Zooms, he offered tips about flight logistics, lesser-visited park beaches, the best brands of reef-safe sunscreen. Then the poems started coming: “It’s official now, yes, the weeks number seven,” my uncle texted, “until you join us on our slice of Heaven.” “For both of you newbies this time means much more,” he wrote to Maggie and me with 96 hours to go, “so count out the days as they are down to just four!”

My family is tight-knit, and I knew the microplanning came from a place of care: Chris and Laura wanted to make sure we had a great time. But with all the fastidious prep and enthusiastic group texts, the anticipation kept building, along with a corresponding anxiety: How could this trip possibly turn out as well as we hoped it would? What if we showed up in paradise, and everything went sideways?

That was why, in late May, standing with Maggie on a marina dock after nine hours of travel from Boston to St. Thomas, I felt a bit nervous calling Chris to tell him the ferry to St. John was totally full. I’d forgotten to buy tickets in advance. But my uncle — who had arrived a day earlier — sounded unfazed. Just grab a taxi to the Charlotte Amalie ferry, he instructed, 10 minutes away. “See you when you get here,” he said. I was impressed: Just one day in, and he was already mellowed out, moving at St. John’s famously easygoing pace. As he’d put it, he was now officially running on “island time.”

After the 45-minute boat ride to Cruz Bay, we jumped into a Jeep with my dad and uncle, who steered us around tight, snaky roads to the villa they’d rented, perched high on a hillside. We quickly drifted out onto the deck, where my general reaction was: Whoa. Over the railing, the slope dropped dramatically toward Fish Bay, near the southwest edge of the park. To either side, points of land reached like green tentacles into the vast Caribbean Sea. “Look OK?” my uncle asked, with a big, knowing grin. I just laughed, awestruck, shaking my head.

Most of St. John — roughly 60% — is national park land. ©KAREN MINOT

St. John is the most rustic of the three main U.S. Virgin Islands, owing largely to the presence of the national park. Nearly 60% of the island is protected land, amounting to 7,259 acres of terrestrial area and 5,650 acres of underwater habitat. The U.S. bought the island from Denmark in 1917, an event known as Transfer Day. As tourism was picking up mid-century, Laurance Rockefeller acquired 5,000 acres on St. John and donated the land for the park, which was established in 1956. (Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument, which encircles the park, was created in 2001 and added 12,700 acres of protected marine environment.) Though only about 20 square miles, the island is a dynamic crush of ecosystems: reefs and seagrass beds, mangroves, salt ponds, rocky scrublands, moist tropical forests, and some of the largest dry tropical forests in the region.

In six days, I wanted to cover as much of the park as we could, including some of the archaeological sites and the 27-mile network of trails. My parents — now in their 70s — aren’t big hikers, and my aunt and uncle had seen all the attractions already, so Maggie and I would break away from the group to do some hikes and spend two nights camping at the Cinnamon Bay campground. Along the way, we’d rendezvous with my relatives at various park beaches, where we’d seek out wildlife: tropical fish and corals, native birds and lizards. The island’s waters are home to three species of sea turtles, and our biggest hope was to encounter one of the iconic creatures. I’d caught an unexpected, up-close glimpse of a turtle in Hawaii years before and was jonesing for a repeat.

Over coffee on our first morning, wildlife came to us. A kestrel zipped over the deck toward the roof, a tiny lizard clutched in its beak. When Maggie and I investigated, we saw silhouettes of two fluffy heads in a vent under the eaves. Chicks! But we couldn’t linger; we had an 8:30 a.m. meetup for a guided hike.

The Reef Bay Trail cuts south through the middle of the park, dropping 820 feet of elevation toward the coast. As our group of about a dozen people marched single-file into the humid forest for a 3-mile hike, one of our guides, ranger Heather MacCurdy (whom we’d be following around all week), warned us about “jack Spaniards,” a kind of paper wasp, and the pesky face-level webs of golden orb-weaver spiders. Mostly, though, it was flora that stood out: tyre palms like giant fans, heart-leafed anthuriums, and some of the oldest, tallest trees on the island. A sign marked a centuries-old kapok, or silk-cotton tree, whose wood was used traditionally by the Taino people to fashion canoes.

Every so often, the ground seemed to shift: Soldier crabs, some with shells as big as softballs, lumbered around. At one point, MacCurdy stopped the group, raising a hand. A speckled fawn came stampeding toward us on the trail. Seeing us, it slammed on the brakes, collapsing in an awkward jumble. It seemed OK. We watched as the mother appeared and escorted it into the brush.

At a trailside waterfall, we pulled out deli sandwiches and found a cozy picnic spot across the spring-fed pool, which was fringed with tufts of razor grass. Just above the water rim, we could see petroglyphs, rock carvings made by the Taino between 900 and 1500 A.D. MacCurdy explained that the Taino had likely placed them so that the images — curled lines and dot patterns thought to represent ancestral faces — would be mirrored in the water, suggesting the link between the natural and spiritual realms.

Ken Wild, a longtime staffer who served as the park’s lead archaeologist and cultural resource program manager before retiring in 2023, uncovered clues about the petroglyphs’ meanings during an excavation at Cinnamon Bay that started in 1998. Under an old Danish road, his crew unearthed a ceremonial site that had been used for five centuries, with artifacts preserved in dense layers. “Every 10 centimeters was 100 years,” he explained, when I spoke with him after the trip. “I could see how the society shifted from a somewhat simple chieftainship to the more complex Taino culture.”

On that dig, Wild made another discovery: Some faces on the ceramics the team found had bat-like noses, a zoomorphic form that matched symbols at the falls. At dusk, the thinking goes, as fruit bats circled the pond to drink, the Taino would commune with the spirits of their ancestors, whom they associated with the winged mammals. “Being able to put all of those elements together has been really special,” he said.

Farther down the trail, we came to the ruins of the Reef Bay plantation. By the 1730s, the Danes had deforested most of the island to plant cotton and tiers of sugar cane. The crop-based economy was largely driven by the labor of enslaved Africans prior to abolition in 1848. One of the last sugar mills to operate on the island, Reef Bay was briefly powered by steam before it shut down around 1916, possibly after damage from a hurricane. We wandered by a massive gear affixed to a factory wall and peered down into the well-like rum still.

By then, we were spent. And sweaty. We emerged onto the white sand beach and awaited our payoff: a boat ride. Soon the Sadie Sea appeared in the distance, helmed by Captain Daniel, who had white-guy dreadlocks and the energy of a hippie pirate. Once aboard, we cruised around the southwest edge of the island back to Cruz Bay harbor, where a few nurse sharks — sometimes called “sea puppies” for their habit of trailing fishing boats for scraps — swam along behind us.

“Ah, beautiful T4,” said the campground manager at Cinnamon Bay, as he checked us in. “You will not be disappointed.” He was referring to our eco-tent. How beautiful could it be? Chris had advised us to pay a bit extra for an “oceanside” spot, and yet again, he was right. Beside the site, a path led through a tangle of trees directly to the beach. “Seriously?” Maggie said, admiring our private sanctuary. The tent was fancy, too, with a porch, a proper bed, electric lamps and even a ceiling fan.

My family, who had set up on the nearby beach, was expecting us, but they looked surprised when we popped out of the foliage nearby. “Hi there!” said my mom and aunt from under their floppy hats. We chatted awhile, staring out at the waters, which were a shocking turquoise. Out in the shallows, small craggy islands called cays (pronounced “keys”) cut dramatic shapes against the sky. We waded into the bath-warm ocean together, marveling at the stingrays that drifted lazily around our feet.

Maggie and I quickly realized the campground was buzzing with life. Iguanas clambered around in slo-mo, while mongooses — one of many invasive species on the island — darted around the tents. Under a thicket, blue land crabs scuttled sideways into groundhog-sized burrows. As we settled into the tent for the night, a brief storm rolled through, and we fell asleep to the thrumming of rain on canvas.

We took it slow the next day, exploring nearby trails, then sipping margaritas from the campground food truck. That evening, we reunited with MacCurdy on Cinnamon Bay Beach for some stargazing. She’d brought along a tall mounted telescope that whirred and swiveled, orienting itself using a satellite app. A few other campers had turned up, and we passed around bug spray while MacCurdy traced the Big Dipper with a laser pointer, then Polaris, which the Taino had used to navigate for centuries, she said, as they floated from South America to the Antilles and back. When the scope found the Orion Nebula, we all took a peek: a brilliant smudge in the sky.

On our last morning at the campground, we figured we’d try some snorkeling. We rented gear from the on-site shop, and soon were flopping our way into the surf. We decided to follow the rocky coastline over to Maho Bay, a supposed hot spot for sea turtles. As we floated over the reefs, electric blue fish darted from crevices, and I tugged on Maggie’s hand when a curious trio of reef squid hovered in front of my face. “Bghlugglugh?” I asked. She nodded emphatically. We also saw sea sponges, a needlefish and mustard-colored elkhorn corals. But no turtles.

The following morning, having settled back in at the villa, Maggie and I hit the road for another guided hike – this time up to Ram Head, which juts into the sea at the southeastern end of the park. By then, we’d rented a lime-green Jeep of our own, and I was getting the hang of the vertigo-inspiring hairpin turns and driving on the left. As we drove, the landscape became dryer, residences sparser, and eventually views of the sparkling bay opened up beside us. At one point, we passed a pair of wild donkeys — some of the 60 or so that roam the island — which were dusty white and stood impassively as tourists snapped photos.

At the Salt Pond trailhead, we met our guide: MacCurdy, of course, whom we were growing quite fond of. She had brought along Chastity Caines, a volunteer originally from St. John.

Down on the cobble beach, our small group stopped for a moment, as Caines and MacCurdy spoke about the significance of Ram Head. In 1734, a group of formerly enslaved people, including leaders from the Akwamu Tribe, took their own lives, possibly by jumping from the 200-foot cliff. The act of defiance, which may have been carried out to avoid recapture, came after the Akwamu had revolted against their Danish enslavers, killing or overtaking them. They held control of most of the island and its sugar plantations for nine months, before French reinforcements from Martinique arrived and surrounded them.

We huffed up the scrubby, arid slope dotted with Turk’s cap cactuses. At one juncture, the wind off the sea shot through a giant notch, blasting us. “Hold on to hats,” MacCurdy said. At the peak, we paused at a plaque commemorating the Akwamu uprising that the park recently installed after a lobbying campaign by the Virgin Islands’ representative in Congress. On the cliff edge, Maggie and I stood for a long while, looking out at the wavering blue horizon, then at the rough waters swirling against rocks below. A gorgeous, haunted place.

After our descent, the others headed back to the lot, while Maggie and I lingered at Salt Pond Bay for a dip. Leaving our boots and bags under a tree, we waded out into the tranquil water. Insulated by hills and stunningly quiet, this beach would come to be our favorite on the island. And then it happened: A squarish head with black almond eyes poked out of the water, small nostrils taking in air. A green sea turtle! Another one popped up, and we watched them slowly dive and surface, not seeming to mind us at all. “I can’t believe it!” Maggie said, as we grinned at each other. It was the story of the trip, it seemed: lots of planning, aided by frequent flashes of luck.

Gibney Beach is also known as Oppenheimer Beach, for J. Robert Oppenheimer, developer of the atomic bomb, who had a house on the beach that his family eventually donated to the people of St. John. Though weathered by storms and flooding, the house is still used for events. As our clan passed by, alumni of a St. Thomas high school were setting up for their 45-year reunion.

While getting our beach chairs situated, I noticed a large, dark form flap into the air and splash down in the corner of my vision. Did something just jump from the water? “That was a spotted eagle ray!” Chris said. The rays are known to leap — possibly to avoid too-eager mates or to rid themselves of parasites, scientists speculate — but it’s rare to see it. Another gift from the island.

We’d brought towels, snacks, snorkel gear and waterproof cellphone cases, but even master planners have off days. As he pulled a bottle of rum punch from the cooler, Chris realized he’d forgotten the cups. He just shrugged, took a sip and passed the bottle around. Even my mom, who almost never drinks, took a swig. Maggie and I exchanged a glance. I felt a surge of baffled joy seeing my relatives laughing in their chairs, maybe as relaxed as I’d ever seen them. Who were these people?

Our final park day took us to Annaberg Historic District, on the island’s northern coast, which includes some of the most intact sugar mill ruins in the park. Maggie and I walked the quarter-mile-long trail, past remains of a windmill, the crumbling factory walls and a restored bakery that is still used for bread-making demonstrations. All the structures were built by enslaved workers, many of whom were skilled artisans. In the intricate, mosaic-like walls, amid brick and native stone, we could see pieces of brain coral tucked into the masonry.

A short walk away is the Leinster Bay Waterfront, which in 2021 was designated as an Underground Railroad Network to Freedom site. We followed a trail along the shoreline to Leinster Point — a launch point for some enslaved Africans who risked taking boats or swimming across the 1.3-mile channel to seek freedom in Tortola. (The British Virgin Islands outlawed slavery in 1834, nearly 15 years earlier than the Danish West Indies.)

Our last stop in the park was Trunk Bay, often ranked one of the world’s most beautiful beaches, and a meaningful place for my family. In 2021, my cousin Jon and his partner, Steph, were married at the site. Still wary of pandemic travel, Maggie and I had reluctantly skipped the celebration, but now, at least, we’d have a chance to get a little closer to the fun we’d missed. Given its reputation (and despite being the only park beach with an admission fee), Trunk was busy, with splashing teens and snorkelers circling the cay. I had to admit, the water did seem a slightly richer shade of blue than elsewhere on the island, if that was possible. Either way, it felt good — if bittersweet — to finally see it in person.

On our final morning, Maggie and I said farewell to the kestrel chicks and took one last selfie on the panoramic pool deck. Though they weren’t leaving quite yet, my family accompanied us into town so they could see us off. As we compared notes over lunch, I told them that the trip had gone exactly right. I wouldn’t change any of it. As soon as I said it, I realized I wasn’t just trying to reassure them, or myself. I really meant it.

Our ferry was running behind schedule, and Maggie and I stood in line with our bags until we boarded the boat, where we waited some more. Sitting on the upper deck, we could see Chris and my dad, who had settled into a couple of Adirondack chairs near the beach. The bay lapped calmly, and we watched Laura and my mom wade in up to their ankles, laughing together. When the ferry finally started moving, Chris held up his phone, documenting the moment as we waved to everyone (he’d send us the clip later, with one final dose of his poetic stylings). I figured we’d spent 30 minutes idling at the dock before shoving off, but my uncle’s voice was in my head: island time. I didn’t mind at all.