We bought a run-down farmhouse in western Maine. The lesson here, clearly, is that childless people shouldn’t be trusted with discretionary income. But we’ve never regret- ted the decision. The Maine house became a place where, unlike our city neighborhood, the girls could wander freely outdoors. There, too, for at least a few weeks a year, family time trumped work obligations. The house made trips such as the current one rare and

special: We seldom went on vacations other than to Maine. When we did, the girls turned out to be the kind of traveling companions who patiently endured 18-hour driving mara- thons, happily climbed claustrophobic cathedral stairs and cheerfully scarfed exotic seafood in out-of-the-way Venetian neighborhoods. It was hard for us to accept that our days with them were approaching an end. On St. John, I found myself drinking in their every move.

Here was Lizzie, the girl who’d inherited her grandfather’s mountaineering gene, testing her night vision by eschewing a flashlight as she strode barefoot around Maho in the dark. Here was Mona, the lover of sunshine and warmth, making it clear why she wasn’t applying to schools in Minnesota: “It’s cold,” she complained, immersed in the bath-warm Caribbean as the sun ducked briefly behind a cloud. “It is not,” I insisted. “Okay, it’s less warm,” came the prompt reply. Here were the two of them, introducing their parents to

key questions of contemporary pop culture, such as: Did one of the Jonas Brothers sleep with Taylor Swift? And if so, did that make the virginity pledge he allegedly later took — Mona got this tidbit from one of the feminist magazines she reads — invalid? The Jonas Brothers? “They have black hair and funny haircuts,” Lizzie said. “I

only know what they look like from bumper stickers.” Bumper stickers? “On Facebook,” she patiently explained.

‘How little we need’

Every day, when we got back from the beach, came a

Maho ritual: the cold shower. This requires some explana- tion, especially given Mona’s strong views on warmth. Maho Bay Camps was created in the mid-1970s by eco- capitalist Stanley Selengut, sometimes called the father

of ecotourism. In a “Dear Guest” letter found in every tent cabin, Selengut describes his brainchild as “a place to rest the soul and restore the spirit, and to find out how little we need in life to be truly happy and comfortable.” Some things we need, apparently: a nice restaurant, a

store that sells French wine, a beachfront shop that rents kayaks and snorkeling gear. Some things we don’t: air conditioning, paved roads,

television — though you can access the Internet for a small fee — and hot water. It’s not that Maho chooses to freeze its guests out of some

misguided philosophical Puritanism. The cold showers are merely the most pragmatic way to shock them into preserv- ing a scarce St. John resource. It works, too: According to Selengut’s letter, campers use water at about one-third of the daily U.S. rate. Ecological awareness wasn’t what sold us on Maho,

though. We’re not that virtuous. The killer app was price. Tent cabin A-18 cost the four of us $165 a night, and while

we dropped a startling amount of money at the restaurant — you can save a bundle by using the Coleman stove Maho pro- vides — the mere thought of hotel prices on St. John would have had us hunkering down at Rehoboth Beach instead. I mean no disrespect to Delaware, but it wouldn’t have

been the same. We loved the morning stroll up the boardwalk to the

pavilion, where we’d soak in the view and plan the day over pineapple, coffee and French toast. En route, we’d check out the shelf where departing Maho-ites left sunscreen, paper- backs and half-consumed jars of peanut butter for those of us lucky enough to be staying on (a vote of thanks to whoever left the battered beach chair). In the late afternoon, tanned and salty, we’d rest our souls and spirits on A-18’s small porch while playing “Where’s Waldo” with camouflaged iguanas in the turpentine trees. “Let’s not wait 20 years to come back,” Mona said one day.

Good idea — not least because Maho could be long gone by 2029.

Selengut doesn’t own the 14 acres of hillside on which his

114 tent cabins sit. His lease expires in 2012, and he has been told it won’t be renewed. Land is an even scarcer resource than water on St. John, and the owners are looking to cash in. The Trust for Public Land, which has already donated considerable area real estate to the national park, is hoping

may 16, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine

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