bySometimes I imagine what tourists do with their first few hours after stepping off the plane into paradise. I bet it involves a scenic ride to their hotel or villa, some gasps at the view and no-filter-needed selfies being uploaded to social media; perhaps a sip of something flooded with rum or an ecstatic plunge into the Caribbean Sea. For me, on my visits back home to St. Thomas every couple of months, those first two hours always find me in the same place: at my mother’s insistence, I’ll be ten feet high in whatever fruit tree is currently blooming in her garden; avoiding antisocial iguanas and blighted branches. This visit, it’s mango season. I bet my fellow passengers are ordering daiquiris from the hotel bar. I’m shimmying down a bough a couple fathoms above my mom’s herb garden, t
