Read Online Home by Another Way by Robert Benson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robert Benson
Ads: Link
photographers. Photographs and paintings never do justice to the beauty of this place; one has to see it to see it. But we bought some cards and some replicas of old maps one time, just to take back to the States to scatter around the house so that when the weather is cold and the world is brown, we can look at the pictures and remember.
The next time we go, I am going to visit the beekeepers’ farm. The British brought honeybees to the island about three hundred years ago. After three hundred years, there are 147 working colonies of bees on the islands. I have no idea how many bees that means are here now. The word is that the honey from St. Cecilia has an exotic flavor for some reason no one understands, and they win international awards for it. The locals say the exotic flavor comes from the exotic flowers. Evidently what you feed a bee makes a difference. I read about the honey on the plane home the last time, but I mean to have me some as soon as I get back.
But beyond those few things, there is not much to buy.
Now I realize we have an advantage that people who live on the island do not have. For one, we have brought with us a supply of books to read while we are there and do not have to figure out how to buy them on the island. Which works out well since there are not many places to buy books.
I also recognize we do not have to go to work in an office every day and do not have to have a wardrobe that will suit such endeavors. On the days I do my work when I am there, and I have worked during a couple of visits (
honest
, I did), I can do it in my bathing suit while sitting around the pool. I do not need meeting clothes in St. Cecilia. I hardly need them in the States. I am not much of a meeting guy, really.
But still there is this sense that wherever you go on the island, less is always rather more in some way. I also get the sense that no one seems particularly disturbed by this.
One afternoon when we were riding around on the windward side of the island, we stumbled on to a curious little village, a historic site, showing the way that the St. Cecilian house had developed over the years.
There were maybe a dozen buildings. Some were authentic reproductions; some were original buildings that had been moved to the village and restored. Mr. Adamsgate showed us around.
It was a fascinating thing to start out walking through a small thatched hut and then to work our way through the village into the present time. It is a time-travel trip through the decades and the centuries. We could see how the houses became sturdier and prettier and certainly more livable, but we could also see how they had retained a kind of basic simplicity that washed over us when we walked through them.
The little houses reminded me of a place I go on retreat sometimes, in the mountains south of my home, a place called St. Mary’s. When I have been able to arrange it, I have spent as much as a week there, stayingalone in a one-room cottage they call the Hermitage.
It is an old sandstone structure that was originally the sacristy of a chapel that burned to the ground back in the thirties. Only the sacristy survived the fire.
It has a bed and a table and a log-burning stove for heat. It has a tiny kitchen, a kind of galley, with a sink and a refrigerator and a stove. It has a bathroom with a shower. It has everything you need if you do not happen to need too much stuff. When I go on retreat to St. Mary’s, I stay in the Hermitage because it feels like home to me for some reason I can never understand.
That little hermitage is one of the few places I have ever been—of the places not actually my home—that have ever felt that way to me. But I keep finding such places almost everywhere I turn on St. Cecilia.
The cottages at Windbreak are a modified version of the traditional St. Cecilia house.
The St. Cecilia house is small, maybe fifteen by twenty, with high ceilings and windows all around to let the breezes through, taking advantage
The next time we go, I am going to visit the beekeepers’ farm. The British brought honeybees to the island about three hundred years ago. After three hundred years, there are 147 working colonies of bees on the islands. I have no idea how many bees that means are here now. The word is that the honey from St. Cecilia has an exotic flavor for some reason no one understands, and they win international awards for it. The locals say the exotic flavor comes from the exotic flowers. Evidently what you feed a bee makes a difference. I read about the honey on the plane home the last time, but I mean to have me some as soon as I get back.
But beyond those few things, there is not much to buy.
Now I realize we have an advantage that people who live on the island do not have. For one, we have brought with us a supply of books to read while we are there and do not have to figure out how to buy them on the island. Which works out well since there are not many places to buy books.
I also recognize we do not have to go to work in an office every day and do not have to have a wardrobe that will suit such endeavors. On the days I do my work when I am there, and I have worked during a couple of visits (
honest
, I did), I can do it in my bathing suit while sitting around the pool. I do not need meeting clothes in St. Cecilia. I hardly need them in the States. I am not much of a meeting guy, really.
But still there is this sense that wherever you go on the island, less is always rather more in some way. I also get the sense that no one seems particularly disturbed by this.
One afternoon when we were riding around on the windward side of the island, we stumbled on to a curious little village, a historic site, showing the way that the St. Cecilian house had developed over the years.
There were maybe a dozen buildings. Some were authentic reproductions; some were original buildings that had been moved to the village and restored. Mr. Adamsgate showed us around.
It was a fascinating thing to start out walking through a small thatched hut and then to work our way through the village into the present time. It is a time-travel trip through the decades and the centuries. We could see how the houses became sturdier and prettier and certainly more livable, but we could also see how they had retained a kind of basic simplicity that washed over us when we walked through them.
The little houses reminded me of a place I go on retreat sometimes, in the mountains south of my home, a place called St. Mary’s. When I have been able to arrange it, I have spent as much as a week there, stayingalone in a one-room cottage they call the Hermitage.
It is an old sandstone structure that was originally the sacristy of a chapel that burned to the ground back in the thirties. Only the sacristy survived the fire.
It has a bed and a table and a log-burning stove for heat. It has a tiny kitchen, a kind of galley, with a sink and a refrigerator and a stove. It has a bathroom with a shower. It has everything you need if you do not happen to need too much stuff. When I go on retreat to St. Mary’s, I stay in the Hermitage because it feels like home to me for some reason I can never understand.
That little hermitage is one of the few places I have ever been—of the places not actually my home—that have ever felt that way to me. But I keep finding such places almost everywhere I turn on St. Cecilia.
The cottages at Windbreak are a modified version of the traditional St. Cecilia house.
The St. Cecilia house is small, maybe fifteen by twenty, with high ceilings and windows all around to let the breezes through, taking advantage
Similar Books
