A Walk with Father Nature

During our stay in St. Lucia, the hotel recommended we take a tour of an abandoned sugar cane plantation. They told us it would be led by Father Nature. The next day, we met Father Nature outside the gate of the old plantation. It was located next to Anse Mamin beach. He showed up wearing a baseball cap and holding a wooden walking stick. Then he led us from the beach into a jungle of thick foliage. He took us under a canopy of trees and past the broad green leaves of ginger lilies with their bright red flowers.

He knew the names of all the plants. Their hidden powers to heal and poison. How to smash the coconut’s rough husk and the leathery rind of the cocoa fruit against a rock to reveal their sweet essences. He showed us the hidden cave where the bats slept during daylight. And where to find the stone remains from hundred-year-old ruins.

Father Nature had learned about the land from his grandmother. When he was a little boy, he had trouble breathing. Many of his brothers and sisters had died before the age of 10. His grandmother said to him, “You are not going to die too.” She took her grandson into her home. Every day for a year, she made him tea with leaves from her garden. She used the power of the land to cure him of his asthma. When he was strong and could breathe again, she passed on all of her knowledge to him.

Now that she was no longer on this earth, Father Nature carried with him all the plants’ hidden stories. He knew the land intimately and had respect for all living things. Before he ever picked a leaf, he would first ask the plant’s permission. “May I please have one of your leaves?” he would ask. Then he would wait a moment as if giving the plant time to respond.

I was struck by how Father Nature was a link from the present to the mysteries of another time. An age when people cherished nature, looked to it for survival, and lived closer to the earth. He was a living channel to the ancient wisdom of his ancestors. Now he would need to find the right per