A
Trip Report of Sorts: Reflections on St. Barths
January 25, 2003 - February 3, 2003
by Bob Brooks
Kara
and I spent another wonderful week on St. Barths from January 28th to
February 3rd. But for a slight drop in air and water temperatures as
compared to trips we have made at other times of year (which to refugees
from New England like us is actually a good thing), the island was as
reassuringly and refreshingly beautiful as ever. St. Barths is very
green this time of year thanks not only to the rainy season in the fall
but also to a daily sprinkle which, as in Camelot, is timed to occur
either while you are sleeping or first thing in the morning so as not
to interfere with a day in the sun. The roads and beaches are delightfully
free of congestion and crowds despite being the middle of high season.
And, of course, the women are still strong, the men good-looking and
the children above average.
In writing this
trip report, however, I feel less of an urge to describe the particulars
of where we shopped, drank, ate and lounged in the sun than to try to
come to terms with and articulate a more profound influence that St.
Barths is starting to exert on our lives. We had an uncharacteristically
busy trip this time -- a working vacation if you will -- and it was
wonderful. Specifically, we have begun the process of writing a restaurant
cookbook which will feature 15 or 20 restaurants on the island with
an in-depth description of the history of the restaurants and the backgrounds
of the owners and chefs followed by a sample dinner menu with recipes
(“fiche technique”) from each restaurant. The idea has been
enthusiastically received by everyone we talked to, and we intend to
return in a couple of weeks for an extended stay to complete the groundwork
for the book. This project, coupled with the growing awareness of SBH
Online on the island thanks to the talent of Kara in setting up the
site and the enthusiastic participation of many of you in the forum,
has allowed us to begin the process of getting to know the island and
its residents on a more personal level. The website has also enabled
us to begin connecting to many of you not only via the internet but
also in person as occurred a week ago Friday evening when we and the
Troyers (the owners of Haute Maison where we
were staying and Villa Kercliff where they were staying with friends)
hosted a cocktail party on a beautiful deck the Troyers have built for
both villas at the top of Pointe Colombier with panoramic views of St.
Barths, St. Martin and Anguilla. Twenty-five people showed up for the
party. Two (the Rands from North Carolina) even showed up on Saturday
night thanks to confusion I generated by messing up the day and date
of the party in my post.
During
the week in St. Barths, I kept reflecting upon the wonder that St. Barths
works at all. Imagine presenting a business plan to a group of investors
where the concept is to buy a small hunk of volcanic rock in the middle
of the Caribbean, beset by chronic water shortages and lacking indigenous
agriculture or industry, lure scores of talented and charming French
people to live on the island, and develop it into a world class vacation
destination. You would be laughed out of the conference room. But, as
we all know, St. Barths does work. Fantastically so. And we can all
learn a lot from this fact not only about how to create a Caribbean
paradise but, more importantly, about ourselves.
It
is said that the work world can be divided between those who live to
work and those who work to live. People in St. Barths clearly fall into
the latter category. Eddy Stakelborough, the owner of Eddy’s in
Gustavia, spoke to us at length one night after dinner about his philosophy
for running a restaurant. One of Marius Stakelborough’s ten children,
Eddy grew up enjoying St. Barths’ simple pleasures like catching
fish for dinner on Shell Beach. He has no interest in running his restaurant
in such a way as to maximize revenues and profits. His prices are among
the most reasonable on the island (Kara and I had drinks, dinner, a
bottle of wine and dessert for less than 100 Euros). He only serves
dinner. He keeps his restaurant open during the summer which is a notoriously
slow period on St. Barths (even though he and his wife take off between
April and October each year) so that his employees and staff can continue
to make ends meet. He gently deprograms chefs who have been trained
in the highly competitive French culinary world from obsessing about
whether they are the “number one chef on St. Barths” encouraging
them to relax, enjoy life and provide an enjoyable experience for the
patrons of the restaurant. (It should be noted that Eddy’s approach
pays huge dividends in eliminating turnover in his kitchen—a chronic
problem on St Barths. His present chef has been with him for four years.
The chef before that stayed at Eddy’s for 11 years). He regularly
employs an old artist friend from the Florida Keys who is continually
in need of funds. The metal light shades which hang on the wall outside
of the bathrooms at Eddy’s are the latest examples of his work.
Take
Andy Hall as well. His business plan is the anti-business plan with
advertising mocking the location of the restaurant, the quality of the
food, the temperature of the beer and the skill of his staff. The list
could go on and on. We enjoyed an excellent lunch at L’Esprit
de Salines and observed the young owners of this relative newcomer to
the St. Barths’ restaurant scene enjoying an extended conversation
with a table of friends rather than rushing around with the self-inflicted
stress and crisis mentality of so many American restaurant owners. Think
of how many pleasant encounters and unhurried conversations you have
with Adam at Le Sapotillier, Dennis at Wall House, Albert at La Gloriette
and Randy and Maya at Maya’s.
This
is where St. Barths really starts to put its hooks into the visitor.
It operates and succeeds via a very different set of assumptions and
values than those which characterize our lives in the U.S. Indeed, the
definition of success itself is very different on St Barths than it
is for many of us. Even the most jaded and world-weary traveler begins
to understand that less can be more and that the way to achieve happiness
most quickly may just be to slow down and ease off the throttle.
To
be sure, it takes time to decompress and unwind to be able to absorb
what I am talking about. Peter O’Keefe, a particularly keen observer
of life (both in St. Barths and beyond) from his aerie atop L’Orient
who sailed to St. Barths in the 1970’s and never left, told Kara
and me he didn’t even want to talk to us until we had been on
the island for at least two weeks. (Fortunately for us, he quickly relented
and we had had a number of pleasant encounters over the course of our
week). Once the process begins, however, it is irreversible and unstoppable.
This
was nowhere more apparent than in a number of conversations with the
Troyers and their friends from Indiana, Duke and Theresa Baker, during
the course of our overlapping time on the island. The Troyers have been
hooked on St. Barths for years first as regular visitors and more recently
as property owners. Theresa had visited the island once before while
on Spring Break from college. This was Duke’s first trip. Even
though we were for all intents and purposes complete strangers to one
another, we formed such a deep bond over the course of that week that
we felt as though (and wished it were true that) we had known one another
for our entire lives. Under a sky crammed impossibly full of stars,
cooled by gentle ocean breezes and enjoying champagne and Caribe beer,
we poured out our life stories to one another, sharing the great questions
which confront us all but which we usually keep to ourselves about where
we have been, where we are going and how to live better and more meaningful
lives. What got all of this started? I submit it is the experience of
being in a place which operates by very different rules which, if you
allow it to happen, will cause you to examine the rules you live by
much more critically and carefully.
To
be sure, this can be a bit unsettling. As improbable as it may seem,
it reminds me of summers I used to spend in Maine restoring an old farmhouse
and getting to know my neighbors in the process. Like St. Barths, Maine
sees itself as a place apart. People from Maine are “Mainiacs.”
Everyone else is “from away.” When you enter most of the
states in New England by car, you are greeted by signs which attempt
to advertise the connection between the particular state and something
of interest to tourists. Hence Connecticut is “The Constitution
State” (for those whose idea of a great vacation is pouring over
the oldest constitution from the original thirteen colonies!); Rhode
Island is “The Ocean State”; Vermont is “The Green
Mountain State”; and so on. Not so Maine which welcomes visitors
with a sign which reads: “Maine -- The Way Life Should Be.”
As I become more and more integrated in life in Maine and became friends
with carpenters, boat builders, country store and restaurant owners,
lobstermen, musicians and very good friends with the people who worked
at the local hardware store, I began asking very difficult questions
about why I continued to drive back to Connecticut each weekend to my
job as a lawyer. I used to say to friends that my summers in Maine were
not a vacation at all if by vacation one means simply kicking back and
recharging one’s batteries for the next round in one’s life.
Maine challenged me. It agitated me. As my time in Maine wound down
each summer, I was up at the crack of dawn walking the dirt roads near
my house and watching the sunset from the rocks of the local lighthouse
wondering what the heck I was doing with my life.
Of
course, these questions did not have clear, immediate or practical answers
(at least they didn’t for me). Maine did not provide me with special
insights. It did not produce dramatic changes in my day-to-day life
confronted as I was by numerous responsibilities and obligations. I
took the bar exam in Maine but continued to live, raise my family and
practice law in Connecticut. And it was exhausting in a sense to put
oneself through all of this rather than simply finding a nice resort,
playing a round of golf, having a few drinks by the pool, eating dinner
and going to bed. But I knew then, as I know now, that I wouldn’t
have it any other way.
Socrates
wrote the unexamined life is not worth living. As she lay dying in a
hospital bed in Paris, Gertrude Stein asked Alice B. Toklas, “What’s
the answer?” Toklas was silent. “In that case,” Stein
continued, “what is the question?”
St.
Barths will not necessarily provide you with answers, but, if you allow
yourself to observe its rules and customs and slip into its way of life,
it will give you something far more valuable: the perspective to reflect
upon and contemplate changing your own life and the passion and possibly
even the courage to do so.
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