“We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.”
— Teddy Roosevelt
“This is not just about preservation of space; it is about the restoration of meaning.”
— Former Sen. Janelle K Sarauw
Professor Olasee Davis unrolls an ornate, historic map of St. Croix in the bed of his pickup truck and calls us over. We have gathered on a cool morning at the forest’s edge in the upper parking lot above Carambola Beach Resort. Davis, an ecologist and historian, is a tireless advocate for conservation and for over 40 years has pursued a singular vision of protecting this remote region of northwest St. Croix as a park. On the surface of the map, a Danish chart from 1767, he traces the route of this morning’s hike into “Maroon Country” and then uses an index finger to outline the contours of the 2,469 acres that make up the recently established Maroon Sanctuary Territorial Park, the largest land purchase in the history of the U.S. Virgin Islands government.
The rugged, remote and relatively inaccessible landscape Davis gestures to with an index finger poised just above the map, harbors within it a unique mosaic of ecological and cultural significance that represents a kind of distillation of St Croix’s environmental history and its ancestral heritage. The series of scenic ridges that run the length of this remote region of northwest St. Croix contain several distinct watersheds and are home to the island’s largest contiguous forest, providing vast intact habitat for a variety of rare and endangered species of flora and fauna. Jagged cliffs plunge precipitously to the wave-tossed water’s edge where several bays and myriad jade-green tide pools punctuate the shoreline. Culturally, the region is rich with archeological and anthropological significance. It features several pre-Columbian sites, physical vestiges of the island’s colonial past (including plantation ruins and stone and coral sugar mills), cliffside caves and historic gravesites that harbor the ancestral memory of the people who have become known as “Maroons.”
We set off from the trailhead and the forest quickly closes around us, as water does when one plunges beneath the surface of the sea. We enter a cool, verdant realm of sun-dappled shadows. Dim light pierces the dense overstory, casting arabesque patterns upon the narrow trail that threads the steep ridge. Our route follows a series of trails that were originally blazed by the park’s titular “Maroons,” escaped slaves who risked their lives by fleeing inhumane servitude and unimaginable toil on Danish sugarcane plantations. To hike these paths is to understand the wisdom of their attempt to take cover and seek refuge in the densely forested and jumbled topography of this region. The living legacy of the Maroons palpably infuses this landscape with a sense of the sacred. “If you are in tune with nature” Davis explains, “you can feel the spirits of the Maroons who once used the area as their sanctuary.”
This past summer Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. announced the historic acquisition of Maroon Ridge and Annaly Bay, which together make up the newly established territorial park. Together with Kitty Edwards (recently appointed director of the Territorial Parks System) and Melissa Hill (project manager for The Trust for Public Land of Florida), Davis and a small group of others submitted a grant proposal that ultimately helped secure the funding from the Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA’s Climate Resilience Regional Challenge, a program under the Inflation Reduction Act, accepted the proposal and awarded the Virgin Islands $69 million last July to protect four properties threatened by development and to fund salaries and park management plans, etc. In his announcement of this historic land acquisition, Bryan highlighted the park’s cultural and historic significance and referred to the region as a “place of refuge for those who broke the chains of slavery and sought freedom in its cliffs and forests. The land carries the spirit of resistance and the strength of our ancestors.”
This milestone achievement in the history of the Virgin Islands has a particular gravitas and meaning for Davis. It represents the fruition of his long-cherished dream to protect this region for generations of Virgin Islanders past and present and to honor the ancestral memory of the Maroons. While the establishment of the park has been the work of many individuals and organizations over several decades, Davis stands alone in his unwavering fortitude, his consistent determination, and his stubborn perseverance on behalf of the preservation of this landscape. Former Sen. Janelle K. Sarauw, who served in the V.I. Legislature from 2017-2023, described Davis’ unwavering commitment to honoring the Maroon’s legacy as “one of the most consequential acts of cultural preservation in our modern Virgin Islands history.” She believes that the establishment of the park itself, “represents a long overdue step in the process of cultural reclamation and historical redress in the Virgin Islands.”
Visiting Davis in his office at the University of the Virgin Islands weeks after Bryan made his announcement, I began our conversation by congratulating him on this singular achievement that he has labored over for decades. In addition to his tireless activism on behalf of establishing the park, his many published articles chronicling the region’s rare cultural history and describing its ecological value, his advocacy has taken the form of education. Over the years Davis has led thousands of students, individuals and organizations on guided hikes exploring every contour of the region, sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of its plant and animal life, its cultural history and his intimate awareness of the ways in which the indomitable and defiant spirit of the Maroons consecrate the landscape.
Davis graciously accepts my congratulations, but then promptly pivots: “now the hard work begins!” he tells me. Given his decades-long struggle to bring about the protection of this region, this seems puzzling at first, but his point is well taken. Now that the region has been protected from development and the living memory of the courageous Maroons has been enshrined in perpetuity, the next steps in the planning and management of the park involve complex questions that will require community involvement and dialogue and sensitive negotiations that will determine the shape the park will take and how it will be managed. Ensuring that the park truly enfranchises all Virgin Islanders while also safeguarding stewardship of the region’s ecological and cultural integrity is no easy task.
The spaces we choose to protect and set aside and how we decide to interact with those spaces reveals a great deal about who we are as human beings. These are challenging, subtle and complex questions but they represent a profound and precious opportunity for all Virgin Islanders as the new park begins its planning stages. Davis suggests that we might begin by placing an emphasis on the word “sanctuary” in the park’s title and allowing the sacred nature of the landscape itself help define the terms and guide the conversation. Thankfully, in my conversations with various community leaders, I discover the coalescence of a common vision for the park. It’s a vision that emphasizes inclusivity, cultural sensitivity and community dialogue. The common themes involve planning and managing the park in such a way that it truly honors the legacy of the past and the indomitable spirit of the Maroons while also enfranchising and protecting the sovereignty of contemporary Virgin Islanders.
When I asked Sarauw what Davis meant when he proclaimed that “the hard work begins now!”, she suggested that he might be “acknowledging the weight of transformation that follows symbolic victory.” The establishment of the park, she continued “is historic, but its success will depend on how we conceptualize and govern it. The hard part is ensuring that the park becomes a living, breathing site of memory, reflection, and education, not merely a geographic designation. It must engage Virgin Islanders as coauthors of its story rather than spectators of a curated past.” Sarauw believes that the planning process should be both participatory and reflective: “It must involve historians, cultural practitioners, educators, and descendants of those whose lives and resistance defined Maroon Country. Their lived experiences and ancestral memory should inform every decision, from interpretive signage to the way the land is protected and accessed. This is not just about preservation of space; it is about the restoration of meaning.”
In a conversation I had with Kitty Edwards, who spoke with me via Zoom from St. Thomas, I heard similar themes and echoes of the same priorities that Sarauw described. Speaking as the recently appointed director of the Division of Territorial Parks and Protected Areas, Edwards emphasized the importance of transparency, communication and community input around every aspect of the planning process for the park. Several local organizations including CHANT and V.I. Trail Alliance are already in conversation with TPPA regarding public access, trail development and maintenance and tree planting within the park. Several public meetings are being planned to discuss these aspects of park development. “Our motto here,” says Edwards, is “V.I. parks, for V.I. people. This is ours! My team is made up of Virgin Islanders and we are spread between St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John. We are generational Virgin Islanders who want to protect and love and celebrate our land and our culture.”
The significance of the fact that, unlike St. John, the park is territorial and not national, can’t be exaggerated. The implications are far-reaching indeed. As Sarauw sees it, this means that “for once, Virgin Islanders have the opportunity to define, interpret, and manage a sacred landscape through our own cultural and historical lens. Too often, our narratives have been mediated through external institutions that frame Caribbean resistance in the language of empire. The Territorial designation keeps ownership, intellectual, cultural, and emotional, within our grasp.” For all of the splendor of St. John National Park, as a model, it presents some dire caveats and critical limitations that must be heeded in the process of planning the new territorial park. According to Sarauw, St. John offers lessons on “what happens when the establishment of protected space results in the displacement of local people and the commodification of heritage. We must ensure that this park does not reproduce those harms. Gentrification and cultural erosion are real dangers if land management decisions prioritize tourism over stewardship. The economic value of Maroon Country must never eclipse its spiritual and historical significance.”
The morning’s hike into Maroon Country with Davis brings us to Wills Bay where we break for lunch along the rocky, wave-tossed shore. Davis is an inspired walker and following him over the steep and sometimes treacherous terrain along the ridge has made for an arduous outing. Engaging with his persistent commentary on a dizzying array of topics related to the natural and cultural history of the territory has been akin to being enrolled in a hands-on, fiercely interdisciplinary, graduate-school-level program of study on foot and on the go! It’s been stimulating to the point of exhaustion and I am glad for the opportunity to rest. This moment of repose allows me to take in the prospect of my surroundings from a perch on a flat boulder a short distance from where the surf heaves and rasps at the shoreline.
Maroon Country spreads to the east and to the west as far as the eye can see in a series of verdant bluffs and steep, jagged cliffs. The sublime landscape spread out before me, I muse, appears much as it likely did long ago when it functioned as a refuge, a sanctuary and a repository of the dreams of freedom that once fed the minds and spirits of those fleeing unimaginable hardship and despair. If the new park can succeed in adequately honoring and enshrining the indomitable spirit of defiance embodied by the Maroons it will have achieved a rare kind of grace. The new park “should be a place where we confront the brutalities of our past while celebrating the unbroken spirit of those who resisted it,” says Sarauw, “it should teach future generations that freedom was neither given nor abstract; it was fought for on this very soil. The park must speak to that defiance and that dignity.”
— Joshua Grant Canning holds a Master’s Degree in Environmental Journalism and in his writing he pursues projects that involve the intersection of nature and culture. On the basis of his writing about the ecological and cultural implications of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, he was awarded a Middlebury College Graduate Fellowship in Environmental Journalism 2008-2009. The fellowship enabled him to travel widely in Japan (where he had lived previously for four years) to research and write about pressing environmental and cultural issues. He and his wife, Wendy, moved from Vermont to St. Croix in 2010 and he taught World Literature and AP English at Good Hope Country Day for over a decade. He is also a musician and jazz guitar enthusiast and performs regularly at events and venues around the island.
St. Croix Source
Local news, News
