After a swim in the warm Caribbean, I settled into my cabana with my iPod and listened to Billy Bragg sing "Way over Yonder in the Minor Key" as a pair of pelicans dove in the surf before me. I spent the better part of the day there, listening to music and watching the sea. At midday, I got up and had a piña colada and opened the picnic lunch that the Montpelier had packed for me—fresh shrimp salad, mango, and pineapple. Later, I swam out again and floated in the waves.

Doing nothing has never been easy for me. But after a few days on Nevis, I thought I might be getting the hang of it.

Shush," said Marty Lowell, one of the owners of Ottley's Plantation, my home for the final few nights of my visit. "They're coming."

Lowell had been giving me a tour of the Ottley's grounds, which surpassed even the Rivendell-like Montpelier's. There were palm trees, flowering gardens, and a long sloping lawn from which I could view the vast Atlantic.

Finally, Lowell—a peaceful, friendly soul with round spectacles and a thoughtful grin—walked me into the forest at the plantation's perimeter. There, he showed me a miraculous ficus tree, its trunk and roots rippling like lava down a small hill. The only things missing were the elves and the cookie factory.

Then he walked me to a bench in the heart of the forest. We'd been talking about the future of the island—the usual topic—when all at once Lowell stopped mid-sentence and whispered, "The monkeys."

We sat in absolute stillness as first two, then four, then two dozen vervet monkeys climbed along tree limbs into the small valley before us. We listened to them calling to one another and watched them pick mangoes, which they hurled into the gorge or at each other, like a crew of goofy teenagers.

We observed the monkeys for a long time, Lowell and I, aware that we were witnessing something both deeply spiritual and fundamentally comical. In the distance, I could see the enchanted ficus tree with its rippling roots, the setting sun twinkling through the forest's thick leaves. And I thought of Oliver Spencer's words as he handed me the philodendron root the week before. "Jenny," he said, "you will come here again." And I found myself hoping that the old man was right.