Chaz Sin: One Writer's Sojourn Through An Odd Life
Views like this, though they hold sad memories for some, inspire me to write, because the earth and sky still create magical art together every day here on Saba. The novel continues to move forward, no slower or faster than my muse will allow, and I’m ok with that. Que sera sera, amigos y amigas!
Waves smashing into every Saban shore, its craggy rocks, its vast ocean square and flat to the distant horizon. If I was a pirate, Saba would be my first choice, too; no wonder Columbus took a quick gander, mistook the perpetual fog on Mt Scenery for a smoking volcano, and headed straight for Statia without landing here.
What’re YOU doing for Valentine’s Day, that most treasured of love and courtship holidays? I’m listening to angsty friends complain about its commerciality, that it’s an invented holiday for card company profits, but not only has it been around since the Middle Ages as a celebration of love, but I think they’re missing the point. Certainly, you should celebrate your significant other all throughout the year, but everyone’s so endlessly busy in day to day life, why not have a holiday just to slow you down a bit and have a good excuse to take some missing quality time together, eh?
Sappy? Maybe, but If V-Day is wrong, I don’t wanna be right. Bless all of you and give your loved one a smooch and a hug today, just because you can.
Can’t help it. Keep finding myself drawn back to the Captain’s Quarters ruins here on Saba, because so much beautiful stuff has grown over it. Do you agree?
Scuba divers new to a location, and particularly new to diving, as my visiting brother is, have no frame of reference for sighting (relatively) rare aquatic life around Saba. They simply think this is what those of us who dive often around here see nearly every dive. In any case, today, our bundle of smiles and energy Sea Saba dive instructor Kelly took us to the windward side dive site of Big Rock Market and 5 minutes later, we spotted bright yellow gorgeous seahorse wrapped around a rope coral, then he let go and started swimming around. Perfectly elegant and moving to be in the water with the little fella. Same dive had two eels (my first spotted and a baby green), stingray, bro’s first shark (nurse), and much much more. Of course, no one had a camera. Gaaaaah – sorry about that.
A very full and foodie crazy day on Saba, rambling down the ridges and across guts and snapping pictures of Spring Bay/Kelbe’s Ridge in the early AM, an afternoon enjoying the splendid lunch made by our friend Marie Petit at her and Bob’s home in Hell’s Gate: a passion fruit-grape-banana smoothie, walnut-spinach-apple salad, seared tuna, grilled tomatoes and spices, capers and cream over mahi mahi.
Later on, dinner at Brigadoon netted us fennel-tomato-onion sauce over dolphin tail snapper. Finishing up the evening, we chilled with our Sea Saba friend Becca and her man Johnny, who’s a chef at Ecolodge. More premier barbecue fixin’s….and a little suds to wash it down. So many premier cooks on the isle. Food is love, is it not?
The locals and expats who live on the island of Saba often cite the Sandy Cruz trail as their favorite. Sandy Cruz traverses the north side of the island across several guts, and does so almost entirely under the cooling canopy of rainforest flora, excepting one short breakout strip that has a 180 degree vantage point to the wide Caribbean.
The other thing about hiking the trails of Saba other than Mt Scenery is that they are more often than not lightly traveled; its possible to spend a couple hours out and see no one, just the chirping of tropical birds, the wind in the giant leaves, the chatter of occasional rain onto the canopy above. On Sandy Cruz, there’s very few biting insects as well and it tends to be cooler, so it’s all the benefits of a jungle atmosphere to love without the mosquito kill slaps to the neck.
If you’ve read my Saba blogposts, I rarely have people as part of my landscape photos, but I caught my visiting brother Michael looking up as we were crossing one particular gut; reminding me not concentrate so hard on the trail that I forget to look up in the rainforest. Some gorgeous interplay of giant ferns, elephant ears and some of the amazing trees on Saba make for a beautiful canopy. You also get a sense of scale in this wet, wonderful wilderness.
In post processing for this picture,I desaturated the overwhelming green of the rainforest to get the red browns of the trail and the swinging vines to pop out around my brother. Michael is an exceptional photographer himself–check out his photos here–and we both dug the result, so here it is for your viewing pleasure.
Forty pages in and a plot line bubble sheet that resembles the doodle drawings of an asylum patient, the book effort continues to form as I forge forward each morning, getting my 500-1000 words in before heading outside for the day. I try not to re-read what I’ve written too much so as to avoid the infinite editing loop and/or get discouraged…this is still the precious draft period, so gotta get it all out of the muse first.
Have a glorious day, folks! It’s back to the ocean depths for my bro and I today.
A Tangled Mind In Motion 
