Coming Home

Since Cate brought me here the first time, I've always needed to go back. Here are a couple of reasons. By the sea, living on the land that her Cabecera ma inherited from the Jamaican family what adopted her when she was a likkel pickney girl who liked to climb trees, is this mixed-blood woman, salt of the sweet earth, Elett Grant. Thich Naht Hanh said (somewhere) that sometimes we just need to be in the presence of a certain loved one. That's what I did in Cahuita. And I brought my sons and husband to meet her too.


At times, over the years, I have felt literally possessed by this place. Who knows? At one point, when I was that wild, lost child (as Andy calls me), I remember licking rain off some waxy, white flowers. I just wanted to get it--all of it, the heat, the salt, the sweet musk of the place--in me. These flowers are datura arborea, aka angels' trumpets or witches' weeds, well known as an essential ingredient of love potions and witches' brews. Wade Davis has said that plants communicate with us: I listened and I'm still hooked!