View from the deck of our bungalow in the jungle canopy at Anse Chastanet on St Lucia, our home for two weeks in 2011, exactly eight years ago this week. Rose is teaching yoga at Jade Resort, up the mountain from us and at Anse Chastanet, right on the beach. My first visit to the Caribbean and it is off to a fantastic start. (Rose taught here five years ago.) The peaks in the distance are the Pitons, also the name of the local beer, a light lager, perfect for the tropics.

I spent the day stalking this extremely shy sand crab from my beach chair. You must sit very still and wait, wait. Very still. Twice I broke off when the pressure grew too great and went snorkeling. When stalking beautiful fish in the coral reef, you must float very still and wait, wait. Very still. Also, I find that to endure the intense humidity of St. Lucia you must sit very still and wait, wait. Very still. Finally, the rains come and for a moment I am in the midst of perfection. Where all is still. Very still. And there is nothing to do but wait, wait …

“Main Street” in the Anse Chastanet resort. The uphill climb takes guests from the dining/services area to private bungalows positioned on both sides of the road. It is lush with vegetation and reminds me of a Disney fantasy — except that the rocks and plants are real. There are 187 steps to our bungalow, More if you head down to the beach or up to Jade Mountain resort.

My first morning run on St. Lucia took me past the ruins of a sugar cane plantation. The sugar cane fields were later converted to fruit orchards after the slaves were emancipated. Once-mighty stone and timber structures, now rubble, are overgrown with tropical flora. It made me think of Macando in Garcia-Marquez’s “100 Years of Solitude.” Later that day, Rose and I walked through the plantation with Meno, a resort guide and historian. He stood us inside this building and described the six roaring fires beneath the six steel vats filled with curing molasses. He described the heat which dropped young slaves like sweat-soaked rags. He showed us the slave cemetery and the church in which they attended mass in shifts before returning to the furnaces. Now, when I run through the ruins, I stop, I say a prayer, and I seek forgiveness. Thank you, Meno.

After her 7 a.m. yoga class at the top of the world, Rose taught one morning and one sunset class in the “yoga hut” on the beach at Anse Chastanet, St. Lucia. To get from one “office” to the other is a hike of more than 300 steps. No elevators here. But plenty of glorious sunsets. You can see Rose inside here leading several students in a Warrior’s pose (I think).

Rose and I stand just outside her “office,” the highest rooftop of the Jade Mountain Resort in St. Lucia. Her 7 a.m. yoga class is sometimes augmented by rain, rainbows (behind us), flights of Cattle Egrets, and beautiful cloud formations sailing between the Piton mountains.

We’d barely stepped off the water taxi to the dock in Soufriere when Paul came up to us and began a patter so practiced and streamlined that I couldn’t get a word in. Before we knew it, we had a guide for the day. Paul walked us up and down the grid streets, through the market and oversized Catholic church. He showed us where the supermarket was so we could shop and where I could pick up good sandals for $5. He showed us a backroom stone-oven bakery that was nearly 300 years old. We bought some amazing bread. He told us how to not get taken by street peddlers and where to get a nice cold beer. He even showed us the hospital, built in 1943. (“The doctors are never in. The nurses have to call them and they say, ‘I’ll be in in 5 minutes’ and it takes 3 hours.”) And he showed us the soup kitchen run by the nuns. As we walked through the market Paul picked up everything to show us — fish, bananas, mangoes, ginger root, limes — the vendors all know him and let him use their displays as teaching tools. He showed us the lingering signs of damage from Hurricane Thomas and the newly rebuilt houses and paved streets. He told us which neighbors were having disputes over property conditions. We were Mister Bob and Miss Rose to Paul. He was an angel from the streets of Soufriere to us. That’s Paul on the left holding a mackerel.

Miss Rose and our guide for the day, Paul, stand in the road beside the Saturday market in the Saint Lucian city of Soufriere. We got there long after most of the market had wrapped up for the day but there was still plenty to see and Paul made sure we didn’t miss a thing. He would pick up a fruit or vegetable from a vendor and say “What do you think this is?” Sometimes we’d get it right and he would laugh with joy. Sometimes he’d cajole us, as if thinking harder would yield a better answer. Paul would say “Pop quiz time, Mister Bob. What wood are these pews (in the Catholic church) made of?” I’d cast about — Mahogany? Cedar? Pine? — until I got lucky and he would laugh. “Very good, Mister Bob.”

Sometimes, when you stare long enough at rock formations from the beach, under a broiling Caribbean sun, you begin to see shapes and faces. Like looking at clouds — only with a frosted Piton beer in your hand and a little sunburn.

Rose and I took a celebratory ride in our favorite St. Lucia water taxi, operated by John, the guy who added “Maximum chill, man” to our vocabulary these past two weeks. John owns his own boat, is fiercely independent, and flies the red flag with the white star of the Labour Party, as most of the boatmen seem to do. He took us across the Soufriere Bay to cruise by the Pitons and get waterfront views of the mansions secreted along the shore. We even saw the property owned by Nicholas Cage, with cattle grazing right down to the beach.

Cruising along the shore in a water taxi. The water is what Rose aptly called “Listerine blue.” An almost unnaturally clear and brilliant blue-green.

On this remote St. Lucian beach, every palm tree is encircled by a pile of rocks. But to call it a “pile” is grossly unfair, like calling a Picasso a scribble. Each circle begins with an outer band of the largest rocks, fitted snugly together. The rocks and rows in the outer band grow smaller and tighter toward the top. The inside is filled with an assortment of rocks but topped off with even-sized stones. The entire beach is surrounded by neatly constructed walls of rocks, too. This is the work of “Stone Man,” a middle-aged gentleman who has made this his life’s work for about seven years. He isn’t sure how long. Each day he arrives with his bucket and begins filling it with rocks exposed by the waves that lap over the black volcanic sand. His long sinewy body looks like an upside-down “U” — a shape honed over the years. Occasionally, he said, storms will wipe away all his work. He is accepting of this. This is nature. This is simply the way of the island. “Do you meditate as you go about your work?” I asked. He looked at me and grinned. “No, no meditation. This is my job.” But it is a bit more than that. At the north end of the beach is the stump of a dead palm that is painted white and carries the signature of this work of art in black lettering: “Done by Stone Man.”

Desmond plays in the marketplace, bending reeds in his hands, turning them into hats and bowls, selling them to tourists who pass by his stand. (Singing obla-de, obla-dah, life goes on …). When we first met Desmond he made Rose a reed sunfish but he really wanted to sell us his reed hat or a reed bowl, for EC$20 each, which isn’t all that much. We didn’t want either as much as he wanted to sell it but we parted cheerfully, having gotten off with just the one fish.
Later, in a local bar, Desmond walked in for a beer break, spotted us and came over. “I sold the hat, mon!” he said, pointing to a head full of exposed dreads. He insisted it was destiny that brought us together and provided a second chance for him to gift us with the bowl.
“I really want you to have this bowl, mon! Nobody else. It was meant for you.” I bought Desmond a Piton beer and eventually paid way too much for his bowl but I can’t help but think that someday that bowl will stop a bullet, wake me in the middle of the night during a fire, or cure some sadness as I look upon the once dark green reeds. Desmond was good Caribbean street theater.
As was another fellow, who walked up to us with a piece of lined paper on which were two stanzas of a newly penned liberation song. He sang them to us as we walked down the street and I gave him a few coins in return.