ing me: Antigua’s three distinct geological areas, as the landscape
shifts from volcanic to clay to limestone.
As he drives, Prosper points out the tall royal palms, planted strate-
gically since colonial times to follow streamways. “Once you pick up a
royal palm, you know it would lead you down into some settlement.”
He shows me the clamonberry trees, which provide shade to the
streams and control evaporation. “If you talk to the locals, they call it
turtleberry tree, because you find that particular bird—the turtle
dove—nesting there. Areas on Antigua where they have cleared these
trees, the whole pond system has dried up.”
Prosper has been detecting other differences, unnatural differences,
in this landscape. “The overall vegetation of Antigua has changed in the
last 20 years. You tend to be seeing more empty spaces.” I recall Hurst
telling me that, in an already dry climate where average rainfall used to
be 39 inches a year, it is now down to 24 or 25 inches. That’s despite the
increase in hurricanes. “What I notice, too,” Prosper continues, “with the
large tree crops—coconuts, mangoes, breadfruit—the time of year that
they bear and send fruit has changed. The size of them, and the amount
of juice in them, has also changed. They’re not as plentiful, and the
breadfruit for example is half the size it used to be. The thing is, you’re
not sure whether this has occurred because of the hurricanes coming
through so rapidly, so the trees don’t get a chance to regenerate to a point
of maturity. But it is definitely hotter, and drier. So there is less moisture
in the ground, impacting on the size of the fruit.”
We have reached the Wallings Forest, the largest remaining tract of
moist evergreens that covered Antigua before the Europeans started
clearing three centuries ago. Migrating warblers and over a half-dozen
bird species found only in the Caribbean reside here, in trees as high
as 80 feet. We park and hike uphill to the Wallings reservoir. “Four
channels made out of concrete that bring the water to this dam are all
blocked up, with debris from the hurricanes,” Prosper informs me. He
also recalls coming here in 1977, with some of his first students. They
brought along a thermometer. “We measured the temperature here at
a normal mid-day at a cool 78 degrees. Today, it’s roasting.”
Beyond lovely Willoughby Bay, where famed guitarist Eric Clapton
has built an upscale drug rehabilitation center, we enter a region of red
Antigua and Barbuda 65