22.8.11

Eleuthera: Part 2

I arrived on Eleuthera at the end of the semester, a time of decompression, transition and departure for island school staff. It was near Christmas and the campus was a relative ghost town with only 5 or so people hanging around. 

Everyone was going home to see there families, and I had just said goodbye to mine for who knows how long. 
A long road lay (and still lies) ahead. 

I was excited to be there, and would go adventuring and exploring every chance I got. 

The Bahamas are made of limestone, a rock created from the skeletons of countless organisms and chemical reactions deep below the sea. The chain of islands arose from the sea, and the sea dominates the landscape. The earth on South Eleuthera is rocky and hard, resilient and often times uncomfortable. Along the coastline, where weathering eats the rock slowly and steadily, its razor sharp and harsh. The locals call it death rock, which is no misnomer. 

One side of the cape I lived on had a shallow sound that stretched for tens of miles across a bay without ever getting deeper than 10 feet. The shore was a mixture of sandy beaches and deathrock, and the institute sat on the shoreline, spanning a restored mangrove swamp with a curving bridge connecting the Island School and the Cape Eleuthera Foundation. 

The other side of the cape was a more adventurous landscape, with deathrock cliffs and submerged reefs with a bounty of fish.

I remember taking many missions out to that part of the cape. Sometimes we would bike, sometimes we would hike and a couple times we took a boat. We would bring spears and a lighter and some seasonings, catching lionfish and lobster and cooking them up right there, as fresh as is possible without the fish still being alive. 


We had such good times out there on the deathrock with the sun beating down and the water so clear and warm and good friends just relaxing, fishing, hunting, eating, being a little bit primal.









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