I nose the Avon up to
a megaton block of bare coral rock and Freddy scrambles
up onto it. I back off to anchor, so the dinghy will not
swing into the sharp coral as we explore. Looking up, I
see Freddy climb onto the first ledge of uplifted coral.
She is a tiny dot of color high above me on the gray
platform. A stunning panorama. Here are the caverns of
sea's remembering thrust up from the horizon of Sea to
interact with the air and form new patterns of knowing.
Green patterns of coconut trees, pandanus, and thousands
of jungle creatures. Along
one edge of this enormous ridge of coral I see a place
where a section of broken coral has fallen to form a
talus slope. There are coconut trees growing on the
rubble at sea level and they reach about a third of the
way up the cliff. Each coconut tree is 80 feet tall. The
cliff makes them look like miniature coconut bonsai
trees.
 I
wade ashore and clamber up to Freddy. We walk through the
old coral buttresses, past stalactites and stalagmites,
under the enormous ledge, up along a narrow path into the
entrance of the big black cave. It is like looking into
the eye socket of the ancient megabeast: at once
mysterious and scary. Inside, the floor of the cave is
reasonably smooth and flat. Towards the back of the
chamber I see a raised platform of rock with something
behind it. I walk back into the shadows to have a look.
There, near the back of the cave, I
discover an altar. Two vases of long dead flowers. Masses
of burned out candles. And presiding silently from the
shadows, a cement statue of the Virgin Mary: the
Christian symbol of the Earth Mother. The spirit of Man
lurks within the heart of the Atoll Megabeast.
Standing there, contemplating the
Earth Mother, my Inner Voice presents the image of the
caverns of seas remembering again, fleshed out with more
words. They are "The Caverns of Sea's Remembering
reflect our journey through the horizons of our own
perceptions as we lift into new patterns of knowing."
I like it. The words conjure a host
of concepts. I see fish rising up from the branches of
the corals, evolving over eons from coral-like ancestors
into creatures with eyes to see and move above the
sightless time when no eyes existed on our planet. My
mind view is an Escherian metamorphosis of coral into
fish. Of sightlessness into vision. It is not entirely an
imaginary image. The metamorphosis really happened. It
happened through many small trial and error steps of
behavior as life learned increasingly complex ways to
interact with itself.
The caverns of coral reflect our
evolutionary journey. Yes, they really do. They reflect
life's slow, many layered, interwoven, movement through
the ever expanding horizons of perceptions. The walls
around me reflect a lifting of awareness into new ways of
seeing and perceiving. Or maybe it's better to think of
the uplifting as a more impersonal and inevitable
process. Perhaps I should see it as the upward thrust of
awareness as mind intersects with the mighty geological
events of the planet. A slowly learning maze of planetary
awareness.
There is something terribly
important, almost urgent, in these thoughts. They hold
me, frozen like the stony Virgin Earth Mother, for a long
time. I turn and look out into the brilliant daylight.
Freddy is outlined in the entrance of the cave, just
sitting there quietly, looking out over the water,
waiting for me. She's really terribly patient at times.
With a start I realize the tide is not ever patient and
we could get stuck in the lagoon if I don't get with it.
"That's weird," I muse as
we thread our way slowly through the now exposed patches
of coral in the lagoon. "It couldn't have been easy
getting that statue in there. I wonder who would put it
in there anyway? And why?"
 Ouvea must have half a dozen big stone
churches scattered along the island. There are only about
3000 people and the island is only 40 kilometers long by
a maximum of 5 kilometers wide. Why someone would lug a
cement statue of Mary into the back of a cave in a place
where there are churches galore is beyond me.
"Who cares what those perverts
do?" Freddy hates churches and anything to do with
them. "More to starboard!" and I swerve to miss
a very shallow head. "Creeps. Worshipping a dead man
on a stick. Getting off on pain and torture." I have
long since given up trying to discuss it with her.
Besides. Looked at her way, it is kind of peculiar.
"But that was the Earth Mother
in there," I protest.
"Yeah, turned to stone and
cemented to the inside of a cave in the dark." No
point in discussing it with her at all. We clear the
shallows and zoom back to the Moira, get aboard, up
anchor and sail back to town.
We anchor Moira well off the beach
at the main village of Fayaoue. There is a commotion on
shore. A gaggle of people mill about energetically doing
something. Small colorful sails litter the white sand. We
motor in with the dinghy. About 25 industrious French have
flown in for a windsurfing weekend.
Freddy chats with a woman named
Monique while I look over the assortment of windsurfers
and the even more interesting assortment of women who
are, like French anywhere, beaching semi-nude. Monique
keeps looking at me. Suddenly she smiles and says, in
English, "You don't understand anything do
you?"
"Nothing," I smile.
"But Frederique is
French!"
I just shrug. "Frederique does
not have the patience to teach me. I'm trying to
learn."
Monique begins to speak in English
for my benefit. "How long do you plan to stay in New
Caledonia?"
"Probably for the hurricane
season." I shuffle my feet in the warm sand. Ouvea's
beaches are among the finest in the world, vast tracts of
gleaming beauty edging the sheltered blue lagoon.
"Oh, that's very good. What is
your line of work?"
"I'm a marine biologist."
This elicits a long comment in
French with lots of hand language and laughter.
Frederique translates, "Monique's sister is married
to a marine biologist who runs the Aquarium de
Noumea."
"Yes, you must come visit us
in Noumea!" Monique insists.
Freddy and Monique get back to
their conversation. I wander around looking at the crowd
of people. They are remarkably fit and very happy,
laughing and joking and fitting up their windsurfers in
the best of spirits. When one of them decides to go get
something, he or she runs there and runs back, usually
laughing, head thrown back in the wind of their own
energy. They intend to sail up to the north end of the
island and camp there. A power boat, which evidently
transported all their windsurfers here from Noumea, will
go along with them and cart their food and wine up to
their camp site.
I move to the top of the beach and
stand in the shade of an old Casurina tree. Frederique
now has several people around her, all male. She's
grinning and laughing in the general good humor of the
day. She "belongs" with these people. I can see
that. They are alike.
She breaks off and comes running up
the beach towards me dragging a friend of Lowell Fink's
whom we met briefly in Noumea. Michel Quantard is a very
pleasant man with a roundish face, medium build and
height, perhaps in his late 30's. "Michel,"
Freddy says breathlessly as he and I shake hands,
"is from Algeria, from the same city my mother and
her father were from."
"Yes, many people from North
Africa came to New Caledonia after the war," Michel
beams happily. "We are Pieds Noir (meaning black
feet, referring to the boots the French troops wore). We
could not go to France so we came here."
"Why couldn't you go to
France?" I don't know anything about the Algerian
and Moroccan conflicts except it was in the early
sixties. The only reason I know that is because Freddy
was born near Casablanca and left Morocco when she was a
little girl. She and her parents arrived in America in
1960.
Freddy looks at me as if I'm stupid
to ask. "Because France is full of Frogs. Never
mind, I'll explain later."
Michel laughs. "Of course New
Caledonia was also very beautiful and most of the French
who were already here were colonists, like us. Many of
the Caldoche have been here for four generations. From
the time New Caledonia was a prison colony."
"New Caledonia was a prison
colony? Like Australia?" I expand on my historical
ignorance.
"Yes, of course. From 1864 to
1897. The remains of the prison are still to be found in
the Baie du Prony. You must go and visit them some
day." Michel shakes hands again and runs back to
join the group that is now getting ready to head off on
their windsurfers.
Freddy and I amble over to the
small Ouvea Village Hotel for a beer. Since Carl and his
friends stayed there, everyone on the hotel staff knows
us. A chubby homosexual dressed in a pareo comes over to
our table and joins us. "Hi, are you still here? We
thought you'd left with your friends." Jon speaks
excellent English. Not many people here speak any at all.
"Oh, we'll hang around a bit
and explore the island." I respond. Jon is part
Polynesian, part European. The hotel owner is also Pied
Noir from Algeria but his wife is Polynesian. I notice
there are almost no Melanesians around the hotel although
they make up the bulk of the population here.
"You must go up to the
northern part of the island and visit my village,"
Jon waves his hand towards the north. "You can take
the bus or just wave and anyone will stop to pick you
up."
"Is it a Polynesian
Village?" I ask.
"Oh yes. We, that is my
ancestors, came from Wallis Island. Do you know of it?
Yes? One day a group of people went out to one of the
smaller out-islands of Wallis to get some wood to build a
new canoe for the King. In those days we called the
island Ouvea. The French later named it Wallis." Jon
stops to light one of his smelly French cigarettes.
Freddy frowns and moves her chair further away but he
does not notice. His eyes are closed as he inhales the
foul smoke.
 "Well....while the men were cutting the
big tree for the canoe the women were on the beach
watching the children and building the fire to help burn
out the log. One of the King's sons with them, a small
boy. Just an infant. When the women were busy, the boy
walked into the sea and drowned. They held a meeting and
decided that if they returned to the main island and told
the King his boy had drowned, they would most certainly
be killed. So they finished building the canoe and sailed
it away, risking the danger of the sea rather than
certain death from the King.
"In the end they came to this
island. The Kanaks were already here, of course, but they
gave my ancestors some land on the north end of the
island, and we've been there ever since. You can still
see the remains of the original canoe at the village. It
is on either side of the entrance."
"And your people named this
island Ouvea?" Freddy asks.
"Yes, I suppose so. The Kanaks
didn't have a name for the whole place so we named it
after our homeland." Jon says wistfully.
"It's interesting you've been
able to survive peacefully for so long on such a little
island. Are there many mixed marriages?" I ask.
"It hasn't always been so
peaceful." He smiles, "And there have been some
mixed marriages, but not many. More with the French than
with Kanaks."
"I heard something about some
trouble with the Kanaks and this hotel," Freddy
waves the smoke from his cigarette away.
"Yes. Indeed there was. The
Kanaks burned it down. Twice. We've only just finished
rebuilding it."
"Why did they burn it
down?" I ask, thinking it must have been bad
feelings because of segregation. There were never any
blacks in the hotel or in the bar.
 "Before we used to allow anyone into
the bar, including the Kanaks." Jon cancels my
theory, "They used to get pissing drunk, spend all
their money and go home and beat up their wives and
children. The women demanded we prohibit their men from
coming here. But, of course, we could not do that. It's a
free country and people do what they want. So the women
came one night and burned the place down. We had to drag
their men out of the burning building as some of them
were too drunk to move."
"Amazing. So how come you are
back in business?" I laugh.
"We've agreed to restrict the
bar to patrons of the Hotel only."
"So now that you are
segregated the women are happy. OK, why not?" I
laugh. The truth just the opposite of what I imagined.
"Well, the men are not so
happy. We're sort of waiting to see what's going to
happen. Last weekend one man rented a single for the
night and invited all his friends to the pub for a
drink." Jon puts out his cigarette and reaches for
another. Freddy gets up and walks out.
Out on the ocean, the tiny
multicolored butterfly wings of the windsurfers are
vanishing into the distance. The powerboat follows the
stragglers whose sails keep falling over and then
struggling up again.
Just before dawn we thread through
the pass, and Ouvea vanishes into a white mist as the
sails set and Moira heels over in the light easterly. The
breeze stirs Sea as Sun rises over the low islands of the
atoll. The golden orange disk of our star reflects in a
long spear of light on the wind rippled surface: a golden
river of Sun on Sea. As we sail, the golden river moves
with us, tracking my eyes.
I see the island moving, the clouds
moving, and the golden river moving. But there is a
difference. The golden river moves with me and I find
this oddly fascinating. The path of sunlight on Sea is
mine. Without my awareness, the golden river of sun on
sea would not exist. Without my eyes the sun would still
be there. The sea would still be there. But there would
be no golden river of sun on sea. Not that one anyway.
Freddy hands up my coffee and I
say, "Come see the sun." She comes up the
ladder into the cockpit. The early golden light makes her
very pretty, haloing her blonde hair as she squints into
the sun.
"Do you see the river of gold
on the sea?" I ask her, smiling.
"Sure, it's beautiful."
"You should see mine," and she looks at me oddly and goes back below. But it's
true. The river of gold she sees is not the same as mine.
It points from the sun directly towards her eyes, not
towards mine. If I photographed what I see now, anyone
could look at the same sun river. It's real, it can be
filmed, anyone can see it but only second-hand. Only I
can see that particular river of gold. And it seems to me
this is an especially important idea. The coffee smell
distracts me and I let it go.
At 1330 I sight a small island on
New Caledonia's reef. Two whales move slowly along the
outside of the reef. When they hear us coming they dive
and vanish.
Two frigate birds soar high in the
sky riding a 25 knot northwesterly wind which comes up
just as we drop the anchor in a well protected bay in
Port Bouquet. The barometer is falling rapidly.
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