Diary: Jamaica Kincaid, The Kind of Gardener I Am Not

Encountering "the grandness of a living member of the vegetable kingdom blooming without wanting to be cared about by me or anyone who came before me"

(Photo of Glacier National Park from walkingcarrot.com.)

Book Post is taking a little pause at the moment, but we’re re-upping some of our vintage posts to keep our readers occupied. Here is a favorite botanical item to greet the arrival of spring. On March 1, 120 land preservation advocates at Glacier National Park joined 433 national park units across the U.S. to protest the termination of roughly one thousand National Park Service employees and 3,400 Forest Service employees, the rescinding of more than two thousand seasonal and permanent job offers, and the dangers these measures present to America’s parks and forests.

One time, when our four children were ages eleven, six, six, and three, my friend Sandy Frazier and I took them for a trip to Glacier National Park. We came in through the main entrance, meaning to go up to the Continental Divide by way of the “Going-to-the-Sun” Road. First we took a walk through a path to see some trees, but I was only interested in the Tiarella at their feet, since I had never seen that shade plant growing in its natural habitat before. Then we drove off on the road to the sun, going uphill, passing miles and miles (or so it seemed) of burnt trees and scorched landscape, the remains of a notorious fire; sometimes there was nothing to protect us from falling off either side of the road and the road itself was very narrow and winding, each twist revealing some natural spectacle liable to distract and perhaps lead to your doom; a road meant for a pilgrimage. Sandy then remembered a time not too long before this trip we were on with our children when he and George Trow had taken this very road and somewhere midway up, at what Sandy believed to be the most dangerous part, George began to recite the words to a song by Noel Coward, “I Went to a Marvelous Party.”
I went to a marvelous party
With Nounou and Nada and Nell
It was in the fresh air
And we went as we were
And we stayed as we were
Which was Hell.

He wasn’t able to recall the song in its entirety but he came up with enough that the children asked him to stop. He then decided he should explain to them the meaning of the Continental Divide and so went into the whole business of pouring a glass of water onto the ground and how half would end up in the Gulf of Mexico and the other half would end up near Alaska. That was met with a seemingly polite silence but when we got to the top of the Going-to-the-Sun Road and got out of the car, my daughter Annie, the eleven-year-old, looked around her, saw the sign that announced our geologic position, looked at the two adults, and said, in that forever annoying high-pitched voice of just-before-adolescence: “What’s a Continental Divide?”