An 11-Year-Old Who “Gets It” 

I love, love, love getting reader mail. Nothing is more exciting than opening my inbox and hearing from all of you! Yesterday I received another great one. It was so sweet that I thought I should share it with all of you.

Meet Carson. Carson is an 11-year-old boy who lives in Missouri. His family has vacationed in St. John and are returning for New Year’s. I received this email from his father Clint:

I wanted to share with you a story that my youngest had to write for a school project. The teacher asked the class to write about a happy place they go in their mind if they are having a bad day. I found that all of the trips to St. John have begun to make an impression on my little man. St. John has made quite the impression on all of our family as we enjoy visiting the island a couple times of year and someday hope to have a place on St John.

Here’s Caron’s essay:

“My Getaway”

My getaway I go to is St. John. I say this because when I go, it is like a paradise in heaven. St. John is the smallest of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. When you fly down to the islands St. John is so small you can barely see it in the big blue ocean. Sometimes when you have the right view you can see one or two islands right next to each other and it looks like the waves are going to move the islands and they are going to bump into each other and bounce right off.

The noises you can hear on St. John are incredible. Some noises you can hear are on the beach from waves crashing into the sand and almost reaching up to the palm trees, to roosters yelling out “cock’o doodle doo” walking past you in the trees while you’re eating lunch on the beach. The locals on St. John are very nice and easy to get along with. Some of the sights you can see when you are snorkeling are the beautiful fish swimming under the rocks and coral a little bit deeper in the warm clear water. Some of the fish are really neat and colorful. For an example some of them look like rainbows dancing around in the blue ocean. Some of the coral you can see is really cool too because if you think of it, the multi colored coral to the colored sea urchins are all alive. So instead of calling it an ocean, you could call it the living ocean from sand to the tippy top of the water.

You can also go on trails and see many different creatures, trees and much more. I am going to end this story like how you would a night. A red, orange, yellow and many more colors you can think of reflecting off the water describe the sunset of each beautiful day coming to an end on St. John.

Now there, my friends, is a kid who “gets it”. And I love it!! 🙂