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Crazy Roads Driving from Cruz Bay to Coral Bay is a little frightening the first time you ever attempt it. But like most things, ease comes from the familiar. The more you do it the easier it becomes. An hour before sunset the curves in the road will at times blind you from the sun at one turn and the next you will be facing totally away from the sun. Some curves you will apply brakes and the next curve you will be putting you transmission in low just to reach the top.  . But oh so sweet are the views when you reach those overlooks along the way. Various shades of blues and green that any artist would be in awe over. And jutting up everywhere amongst the blues are islands of all shapes and sizes. If you drive with your windows down, the breeze flowing down the mountains are exquisite. I quickly inhale and hold that moment trying desperately to permanently imprint that moment in my mind forever. Then a large truck comes around the next corner and you come to your senses and release those memories as soon as the truck passes. Only to come to the next pullover and the next great view. This is everyday in St. John. An island 9 miles by 9 miles and two thirds are owned by the National Park Service. Every person visiting dreams of what it would be like to let go of their present life. To let go of all their stress and move to this tropical oasis.  Trunk Bay I moved to St. John in 1983. It was a vagabond existence.  For a year I rented a house in Coral Bay and also lived on a boat in Cruz Bay, the main port of St. John. I looked at land but really didn’t have any money to invest. I moved back to the states and saved my money. Two years later I took a week vacation to St. John with a friend. Our intention was to see if buying land on St. John was an option. We drove around with a few different realtors and found that most things were out of our price range. We spoke to locals and continentals as to if they knew of any land reasonable for sale.  . At the end of our week and the last piece of land to look at, we found it. It was tucked in the valley, a short hike to an old plantation house. There was no ocean view, but more important to me were strong and bold mountains all around. I went back to the states and handled the details with the realtor. I put a deposit on one piece out of the 15 in the subdivision. The subdivision was named LaLa Land if that tells you anything about the formality of this subdivision. The owner was in a dispute with another man about a different piece of land he owned. This held up all his holdings therefore I had to wait to close on the deal. I was told this would be settled within months. Well true to island time it was over two years later before I could close. Trusting all things are for a reason and all things come when it is their time, this was to my advantage. Somewhere in those two years the government informed the owner that he had subdivided wrong. He had separated the pieces into 1/3 acres which would be zoned R2. This is what he was told at the time he bought it but all things can change in the eyes of the government at any moment. So he divided it again so it would be in accordance with R1; no smaller than ½ acres. I ended up getting ½ acre for the price of what he was going to sell me 1/3 acre due to fact I had paid the deposit over a year previous. We paid $16,000 for the land in 1989. I had moved to the island six months before the closing.  I needed a place to live so we built a deck on the property and put a tent on it. This was without a permit. Years later that became an issue. It was overlooked due to the fact we said we built it after Hurricane Hugo had caused so much destruction to the island and we had no place to live. The deck became a shack and later more was added to make it a good size cabin. It never had running water or an indoor bathroom. So we continued to call it a construction shed. . . We saved up $5,000 over the next few years and decided to build a house. I had wanted a yurt but my partner wanted a concrete house. He was from the islands and wanted a strong island house. That strong island house was much more expensive than my yurt so we ask relatives for loans.  No one had any extra money at that time, so we took the $5,000 and started building what we could. Seeing that we were serious, an ex-mother-in-law decided to loan us another $10,000. Oh the power of letting the universe know you are making steps toward your dreams. If you sit and wait for it to happen most the time it won’t. If you put something, most important your heart into it, the universe will respond. Not always when you think. Just be patient and give thanks for what you have and keep moving forward. We did move forward and my partner and I and my children all put a lot of mental and physical energy into building this house. Block by block. Shovel load by shovel load. My partner would mix the cement while I drove to the nearby island of St. Thomas to pick up another SUV load of supplies. My car was always loaded to the fullness with babies and young boys and building supplies. We would pay the $50 barge fee to cross the harbor to Red Hook, St Thomas and then I would drive to all the stores necessary. It took us almost five years to finish the house. We loved it. It had a large flat yard. You didn’t find many flat yards in the mountainous island. We had built a large open kitchen-living room with a cathedral ceiling made out of cedar. The cedar was hand stained and sealed. There was a large cupola with a loft. There were small windows that surrounded the cupola bringing in breezes and letting out hot air that had risen in the house during the heat of the day. It also provided a release of air when the house was boarded up for hurricanes. After Hurricane Hugo we boarded up often as many hurricanes passed over us or near us over the next 15 years. I always felt safe in that house. The whole neighborhood would come over to seek safety from the storms. Most storms just threatened to come. Those that came never caused any real damage to us.  This was the first house for all of us. We had always paid rent up till the shack. Now we had a house with solid walls that could handle most anything including hurricanes that passed our way. It felt good.

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Soon the day would come to sign papers that the lawyer had prepared. To get ready for that day I spent many hours on various days at a government building called Cadastral. It is where all the legal papers are that record who owned what and when. This is where title search people do their research. I had never done this before but there are employees there to assist you. Many people that do this for a living were also very helpful. One file lead to another. I found it very stimulating to find the names of those that had come and gone before me. I love reading history and this history had personal meaning to me. I even found out where grave sites were. I found info on the land that long time neighbors did not know. I found out they called the area Williams’s retreat which had special meaning to me as I wanted to build a spiritual retreat center and my last name was Williamson. I also found out that my easement was legal and even survey by the government. Easements are very important. Some people end up buying ‘land locked’ land that they end up in court over for decades. The land sometimes is owned by many relatives. Often they can not agree on what should be the fate of the land. This is why clear title is so important. This is another reason often it does not work out to buy land from locals. It is often less expensive but can be tied up in courts for years. After seeing that this land was clear for myself I still had to buy title insurance. You never know what might creep up thru the cracks. Also the previous owner of the land required this for owner financing as a bank would also require. This was the only insurance required. My lawyer made sure the land taxes were up to date at the seller’s expense. There is a 2% tax stamp that I agreed to pay. Finally we were ready to transfer the deed. My lawyer handled all the paperwork for that also. Pretty painless all and all. 

They say when you close a door another one opens. We decided to put our house up for sale and it sold in 6 months. Now we were ready to do the first phase of house plan permits. Once submitted, house plans can take up to 6 months to get approved. Anyone can draw the plans but they need to know the local building codes. It is in par with Miami Florida. Then a license Virgin Island Architect has to sign off on the plans. This is easy enough to find. There are a few that work for the Dept. of Natural Resources; the gov’t office that approves plans. I believe it is a little undercover as it is not really legal to work for a government agency that approves plans and also be the one submitting them. But if you ask around the names are there to be found. Their fee varies depending on the size of the house. Sometimes it is best to do everything with a license architect from the start. You end up with ideas that are helpful that you may not think about. They do this everyday in the islands and their experience is worth the money. It’s best not to expect to get to start building for at least 6 months after you submit plans. And after 4 months it is good to go in and check on them to see how it is coming. It’s good to let them get to know your face or hire someone to do that for you. 

We went forward with house plans for two houses and a shack.   It was going to be the first phase of the retreat. We would live in the houses till we continued with the rest of the retreat plans. While preparing all this we lived in my dads 12x12 cottage. We thought it would only be 4 months with 4 people living in this small space. Once again island time turned the 4 months into a year and a half. 

We rebuilt the easement road, as it was just a grass path. This was a very big task. The easement ran between our neighbors land. These were locals that inherited the land from their father. They did not have much knowledge of the land or of the deals their father had made with the man I bought the property from. They did not want anything to do with me. I was an outsider whom they believed should not be bothering them. I had much anger and resistance from them. I had known the son previously and had always gotten along with him until he found out I was going to be his neighbor. After many conversation with him and his sisters they realized I had there interest in mind along with mine. They also realized legally I had all the proper papers. It was a big help that I was always respectful when speaking with them. I knew local customs for speaking. Always say good afternoon or good day, speak slowly and listen to what they have to say. It also helped that I knew the history of the land. It made them feel I cared about the land. In the end they agreed to the bulldozers for the road as long as I stayed away from a grave site they believed was where their aunt was buried. Also the son needed to be told when the trucks would be there so he could watch over it all. Fair enough. 

This whole process made me realize that having all the proper papers didn’t always matter. If they wanted to fight me in court it would have been years before I could have built. It would have been much better had the easement road already been built before I bought the property. 

We started to build the smallest building on the plans. This was due to the fact we paid off the land with the money from selling the house. This was not a wise decision. We had never owed such a large amount and did not like it hanging over our heads so we paid it off. We also wanted to remove any chance the land could be taken away if we found ourselves unable to make a few payments in the future as it was a 20 year loan. But what it also did was use up all our money that would of helped us build more buildings. This in turn would have helped us pay off the property from the collecting of rent. Instead we paid off all family loans and all other loans with the money from the house. Now all we could build was the small office space we had drawn away from everything else. It was a 12 by 12 foot building. Clearly not enough room for us to live. I spoke with the building inspector and got verbal permission to build it a little bigger. They liked me. It had to be because they did not do this often. They said when I could, I had to resubmit the plans as a revision which I did six months later. I ended up with 3 times the building that was on the plans and now that building is on the market for $595,000.

A year later when we finished that house (office) and moved into it, we started to build one of the real houses on the plans. There were two houses and an office on the plan. This second home was started by my father and us. Three quarters into it he decided he wanted to move to the states so we decided to take it over. We got a lone on a half acre of the land. A land loan. We had subdivided one parcel of land into three separate pieces. You are allowed to do this once a year. If you choose to subdivide more than 3 parcels per year it has to go thru senate hearings. I believe this is where the payoffs start. The 6 acres was actually 3 separate parcel numbers. Three separate tax bills. The one parcel with two acres is the one we separated. We have houses on two of the newly separated pieces. The other piece is just land. This is the piece we have tied up in a land loan. This gave us the money to almost buy out my father and finish the house. Now that house is on the market for $945,000. 

This is the short version of the story. The long version is two boring to tell. It entails endless moment of patience. Endless moments of waiting for revised house plans, people to show up and do what they told us they would do weeks earlier; waiting for weather, insects, people and product. All the while getting to watch the ocean and mountains, smell the trade winds, hike the land and find all the little treasures we found. But most of all we got to dream. Dream of all the times ahead and laugh about all the times gone by. 
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