I’ve been on a border kick lately. You may have noticed that if you’ve been paying attention to the last several of posts. Quite some time ago I described a situation in Florida. There, five counties came together at a single point in the middle of Lake Okeechobee.
Now something a little more dramatic: five parishes on the island of Nevis coming together on the top of a volcano! OK, actually a dormant volcano. Nonetheless, volcanoes can and do erupt in the Caribbean basin as Montserrat showed in 1995.
A Little About Nevis
Nevis is part of a tiny two-island nation, the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. Nevis is the more diminutive of the two both in size and population. Only 12,000 people occupy its 36 square miles, a roughly oval shaped jewel with its longer diameter extending perhaps 7-8 miles. For some perspective, consider for a moment that Washington, DC, the capital district of the United States, is roughly double its size. So it’s definitely tiny.
Now consider the five parishes of Nevis:
- (1) Saint Paul Charlestown
- (2) Saint John Figtree
- (3) Saint George Gingerland
- (4) Saint James Windward
- (5) Saint Thomas Lowland
They’re like wedges in a pie, with a common point atop the volcano, Nevis Peak! The smallest one, Saint Paul Charlestown, claims only a half-mile of coastline and consists of barely more than the town itself and it’s paltry slice of the mountain. You’d definitely walk away hungry if you grabbed only that puny slice.
The parishes also have this interesting naming convention. They go with a saint combined with a town or geographic descriptor. That’s interesting but not really germane to this entry (other than the strangest things amuse me). Nevis Peak dominates the island by jutting some 3,232 feet (985 meters) just three miles from the sea. Flat coastal plains ring Nevis as does the population although Nevis Peak serves as a constant backdrop. Its rise is sharp and pronounced. This reminds me a lot of when I visited Pico in the Azores a few years ago.
So there is a single point on Nevis Peak where one could climb — and it’s possible to do although from what I’ve seen online it may be rather strenuous — where theoretically one could reach that magical spot. I’m not seeing any relevant Google hits on “stand in five Nevis parishes simultaneously.” Will you be the first to document it?
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