The Tourist Tree

Somewhere out along here, keep an eye out for a tree that looks like it lost a fight with the sun. Smooth coppery-red bark, peeling and curling off in papery shreds to show pale green underneath — sunburned and flaking, the very picture of a northern visitor who spent his first day on the beach without a shirt. And that's exactly what the islanders named it. The gumbo-limbo — the tourist tree.

Now folks have loved this homely tree for a long time, and for a good reason that's half tall tale and half gospel truth. They say you can't kill it. Cut a fat green branch off a gumbo-limbo, sharpen the end, drive it into the ground for a fence post — and instead of rotting, the fence post takes ROOT. Sprouts leaves. Grows. Down here they call it the living fence, and old island homesteads were strung with property lines that had quietly turned back into rows of trees. Some folks call it the friendship tree, for the same reason — because you can break off a piece, hand it to a neighbor, and it'll grow wherever they plant it. There's not much out here that forgives you for being rough with it. But this peeling, sunburnt, good-natured tree just shrugs, and roots, and grows. I've always thought that was a fine thing for a tree to be.