Easter

From the northeast United States, where I grew up the cycles of light and dark, equinox to longest days, and snow to mud followed the same contours of the Germanic world where Christianity, born of deserts, appropriated the tannenbaum and yoked the resurrection of Christ to the unbeatable joy of discarding jackets. My dictionary, which references St. Bede (c. 700), tells me that the holiday’s name comes from Eostre, a Germanic goddess of spring.

On Friday, after a half-day on Thursday, I headed off with Mustang and almost a dozen others to visit Jaco Island, which sits off the Eastern tip of Timor-Leste. Over a year since my last visit, the road down from Tutuala has been dramatically improved and a tidy eco-lodge closely resembling those on Atauro has sprung up.

While many devout Timorese walked the hot roads in Good Friday processions, one group blocking the main thoroughfare between Dili and Baucau for over an hour, my holiday took its cues from the pagans. Upon arrival, Mustang and I slid into the clear water and were in and out as the full moon – a naturalistic facet of Easter that makes it a “movable feast” – rose over Jaco. The following night I won an arm wrestling contest and then slept on the beach covered in sand.

It felt good to get out of Dili and camp out, to stay up too late and wash my face in the sea. And even if here there isn’t the same exultation of winter’s demise, we came to Jaco at what at close of a long rainy season. The skies were clear, seas calm, and hills still green – it was a promise of diving and hiking and biking to work; of planting a garden and, for a friend, fresh hope that the slugs would soon leave his bok choy alone.  In the cycles of wet and dry that give Timor its rhythm, it is Easter that marks the beginning of a new year.