Eleuthera Talisman

“Pull the car over” my husband anxiously requests.

We’re nearing the bottom of ‘Pyfrom Lane’ in Governor’s Harbour: a narrow, one way thoroughfare named after my great-grandmother’s family. It’s September 2013, low season on Eleuthera – as it is on all out islands of The Bahamas – and Chris has spotted a diamond in the rough. Set amongst a row of tiered houses she sits, the last of a series of colonial homes in desperate need of a facelift.

“Find the worst property in the best neighborhood and buy it” says Chris. As a purveyor of the lifestyle and landscape of the archipelago, it’s advice I nod in agreement with.

Fast forward 17 months, and we return to Eleuthera. Having swapped the idea of a fixer-up for bare, naked land we set out on a purpose driven vacation: introduce ourselves to the land so in turn it can introduce itself to us. Before hastily building a house on the hill, we will understand the topography in relation to the sun and from where the prevailing winds blow.

Between clearing local flora in the shaded hours of the morning and the late afternoon, and strategically revealing pockets of land, we pop in to Gregory Town’s ‘Island Made‘. It’s there I purchase this talisman inscribed with the silhouette of the 110 mile island. Placing it on, and binding it with a knot, I realize that for some the eventual unraveling of the bracelet signifies that it’s time to return to their favourite vacation spot, but for me it’s a tell-tale sign that it’s time to return home.

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