I see blue, green, and brown.  These colors make a background.  Bright splashes of vibrant oranges, reds, and purples peek out from behind the leaves, in the form of flowers, fauna, and fruits.  As my friend Marina once described, “The rainforest is like a magnificent painting, with the light changing as the days go by”. It is a few months after Hurricane Maria.  When I go outside, I see new plants growing back and hear birds that have come back after fleeing from the storm. Life is coming, slowly but surely, back to Saint Croix.  

The hills rustle and echo with life.  Bananaquits are whistling in the towering kapok trees, beady-eyed thrashers screech in the baobab.  As the burning white sun started to descend from its perch in the highest reaches of the sky, it’s light reflects off the clouds, turning the sky into a multi-colored mirror of light.  This colorful light casts its glow on the valley.

It is a Thursday, my favorite day of the week.  This is the day that I can be in a place where I can be myself, and be with people who understood me.  This is the day I can go to the rainforest, make incredible things, and learn survival skills. This is the day that I can forget my worries, learn about who I really am, and be at peace with myself and nature.

We had a morning of peaceful wandering, but now everyone is settling down.  My brother ran off a few minutes ago with the other boys, always the one to get sweaty. Right now, I can hear them yelling, “I got you!”, “But didnt I just tag you?” and “You’re it...”.  It is quite amusing.

Maria, my sister, has decided on a better tasting route. She and her friend Acacia are over at the old melee apple tree, picking the juicy, tart, and mildly sweet fruits hanging there.  Even from here, I can see their heads peeking out from the leaves. I can pick up a little of their conversation now. “Hey Maria, there’s a clump of ten apples over here”, says Acacia. “Climbing over,” Maria replies, “do you have enough room in your basket for more?”.

The soothing conversation of Maria and Acacia, the exclamations and shouts of the boys, and the sounds of the flora and fauna around me are creating a beautiful mismatch melody.

“What should we do?”, I ask my friend Marina.  She replies, “Why don’t we make some pottery? That sounds like a fun idea to me!”.You see, the cool thing about making pottery is that if you have any anger in yourself, you can pound it all into the clay.  It’s also a great stress reliever.

We each take a handful of the wet, mushy, slimy, and still rocky clay.  Plopping the gooey sludge on long and thin boards, we take them with us over to a flat patch on the hill.  Marina and I sit down cross-legged on the soft green grass, resting the boards on our legs. We are shaded by the same towering, leafy melee apple tree that Maria and Acacia are picking fruits in.  Then we start working on our clay.

“What’s first again?” I ask.  “You don’t remember?”, says Marina.  “You have to pick out any stone bigger than pea, then you have to knead sand into the clay.” “Oh now I remember!”, I reply.  As we go through this process, we converse. “How was your tap class?”, I ask her. “It was pretty good,” says Marina, “we worked a lot on this one dance.  It is for the song Try Everything by Shakira.  I think it is really powerful, because it talks about never giving and always trying new things.”  

Next comes the fun part.  This is where you get to slam your ball of clay in to your board repeatedly, over and over until all of the air bubbles are gone. You can use as little or as much force as you want.  I personally like to give it as much “Umph” as I can. It sounds like this…. ”THUMP” ....”SPLAT” .... ”BUMP”, for at least five minutes. After this process I feel like any pent up negative energy has gone straight into the clay, never to be felt again.      

As we each form our own pots, cups and plates, and the sky is getting darker and darker, people start to go home.  Calls of, “See you next week!”, “Thank you so much!”, “Have a good weekend…”, and “I still think that I won!!!” are yelled from friend to friend.  “Wasn’t that a great day?”, I ask Marina. “Coming out here pretty much means it will be a great day” she replied. “Yep. Nature, friends, learning, being creative, and making incredible things.  What could go wrong?”.

These are the kind of days that remind me how important it is to find out where you can be yourself, who you can be yourself with, and what makes you feel like you.  When you are yourself, I believe that you can be truly happy. And, in life, I think you should try to be as happy as you can.