Paradise was on full display for our island tour. A scenic road, dotted with wild donkeys and wild horses, circled the tiny island. Single-story houses boasted large yards with low walls to keep the donkeys out of the flower beds. Tall, stately palms capped with wide, green leaves framed stunning ocean views on all sides. There were windmills and a beautiful lighthouse.
It was on this tour of Grand Turk that we first learned about White Gold. Beginning in the 1660s, the economic mainstay of the Turks and Caicos Islands, particularly Grand Turk and Salt Cay, was the production of what came to be called “White Gold.”
Or, as we say it: salt.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Turks and Caicos were the greatest producers of salt in the Americas—salt created by sun and ocean water, and then raked up by humans. Today, little of those original processes remain. Some of the equipment and paraphernalia are in museums. The salt flats are still everywhere along the shore. But industrialization and modernization have changed the salt industry, irrevocably. Oh, you could still produce salt the natural way. But the economies of scale have eliminated it as an economic engine for the Turks and Caicos.
The salt still appears, but it’s no longer golden.
What’s left to sun and sea—the remnants of those old processes—are flat, salt-saturated patches, dead land where nothing grows. Only the ones that are replenished daily by ocean water have any plant growth. Otherwise, those island spots just don’t have the nutrients to sustain edible plants.
Such salt-saturated lands appear in this week’s Jeremiah passage. Reflecting similar language in Psalm 1, Jeremiah urges his readers to place their trust in God. That way, they can be like “a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”
Jeremiah contrasts this lovely situation with what befalls those who place their trust in anyone or anything other than God, declaring, “They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”
Now that I’ve seen such “salt land” with my own eyes, I can assure you, choosing to be the tree by the water is a much better option—even in an island paradise.
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PHOTO: “Tree by the Water” by Steve Orr
A great little article from Smithsonian Magazine about the rise, and fall, of White Gold:
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Friday mornings are a high point! Join us for DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast at 8:00. We still meet on Zoom** and at Our Breakfast Place restaurant. Food, fellowship, scripture, prayer, and some of the funniest stuff you’ve ever heard. It really is an hour like no other.
Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Luke 6:17-26
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