An Island Called Bimini - By Maddalena Polla

Imagine white sand, palm trees, and dust. Oh, there is dust everywhere, it lays above all things: still and immutable. At the right time of the day, the rays of sun shine through it, and it looks as if everything was golden. It always seemed to me like a strange coexistence of realities. It is both neglected and precious, both a ruin and a jewel. 

You wouldn’t know if you’d never walk on its paths, but this island exists in the absence of time. Its roads are unpaved and its corners overlooked. Nothing stirs, not even the shadows. Its people walk with heavy feet, with big smiles, with nothing but an unbroken blue line to draw the borders of their homes. They are like their land: rough, yet beautiful. And all day long the soft breeze carries the songs of the waves. I can hear the nostalgic slashing everytime I close my eyes. In Bimini the motion of the sea is power and endless sadness. You see, the land and the ocean are much like the sun and the moon: lovers doomed to never be together. While the sun has accepted its fate and will suffocate its love in roaring flames at every sunset, the ocean is relentless. It builds and stretches and leans over in a desperate attempt to be reunited with the land. The world of men exists within the tragedy of unrequited love, and our blessing is to witness it without understanding. 

[Bimini Sunset - Photo by Chelle Blais]

Everything here is soaked in salty air: I can feel it on my cheeks, it is the harsh kisses of eternal summer. In a place like this, no plant would have thrived better than the mangroves. Strange looking things. They grow intertwined, strong and curled up with each other. They are nature’s mermaids: trees on the top half and underwater mazes on the bottom one. They are so beautiful. Their leaves like to play tricks with the light: they curve from left to right, letting a stream of golden copper colours shine through the underwater roots. To go through them means dancing in between the tangled braids of wood, you have to duck down and step over, scooch, stretch, reach and beware of the feisty mosquitos. It is not easy, but rarely magical things are. 

It is in the twisted paths of the mangroves that I got to understand what Bimini truly is. Before I let you in, allow me to paint a more accurate picture of the dry land. Bimini is made up of two small islands, on any map they are invisible to the naked eye, but if you really try you could make out the shape of a crooked triangle, just outside of Miami. In between the two islands there is a small stretch of water traversable only by ferry. Oh, you should witness the ferry ride. It is a mix of cordial chit chats and grumpy banters. It is loud, messy and slow. There are always ladies, whose hand you have to hold helping them down the two steps in between the concrete wall and the ferry. They sit down in their bright clothes and tell some story of some grandchild who is doing something somewhere else, outside of the strange world of Bimini. There is the ferry driver, and this role comes with all the confidence the job requires. To steer a boat such as the mighty ferry of Bimini one would need solid nerves: they get bumped and banged and I could swear they shrink at convenience when needed to be parked. There are the young and the old men, the children asleep, the tourists with fancy luggages, and then there is us. Sitting on the blue creaky seats, stuck in a limbo: not locals, not really foreigners, right at home in an ocean that is not ours. 

[The Islands of Bimini - Photo by Chelle Blais]

North and South Bimini are two different worlds, the north is busy, loud, and there are golf carts everywhere, driving roads too small for their size. There are kiosks where the stereos blast all the bad pop songs, and all the good food is cooked in the back of a dark old cabin. More often than not, a gigantic cruise ship will anchor on the tiny coast of North Bimini, pouring out tourists. When that happens it is as if the long stretches of sand come alive, and all together let go a tired sigh. The southern island is a lot more lonely. It exists on its own accord, a slow rhythm of blue skies and games of shadows. At certain times of the day you would hear the rattling of an old tractor breaking the silence. It moves amongst these roads filling up the air with a dark cloud, the man on it sings old country songs, sipping away his days. He is one of a handful of permanent residents. The rest of the island is left to dreams and whispers. There are a few pastel houses sprinkled around, whose shutters never open. I have walked many times the road that goes to the old beach club, and every time I walk alone. There is the sporadic encounter with familiar faces: a polite wave of the hand, and then they disappear in the distance. But the rest of the time, I just take in the warm wind and look at the games of light that the palm trees play. The iguanas sprint on the grass and the hermit crabs trot away rolling invisible grains of sand, it is all quick and yet I am able to savour it, it is all poetry. And then there is blue, in all its drops and all its tones. There is turquoise blue in the sunny days, dark cerulean waves roaring away the anger of the winds on stormy ones, there are evenings when the blue shades turn into purple: those are my favourite colours. It mostly happens when the sun gets stuck in the clouds at sunset and lets out only a few rays. It must be infuriating, being so bright and yet struggling to get through. So the night starts settling in and the sky blends it all, the water slashes onto the sand and the sun burns away, within the lullaby of seagulls another day dies in Bimini. At the edge of the beach sits a small bar. There the choice of music is always strange, the food always fried and the drinks always cold. There also is someone always ready to fire up some fireworks, for no other reason than it seems like a good Wednesday to do so. I like the bar, it reminds me of places I know well. The barman is a big man, who often seems gruff, but I have caught him smiling under his breath more times than he would care to admit. With another couple of places and the marina where the boats dock, this makes up the entirety of South Bimini. 

Amid the corners of this world, I’ve found that seemingly barren places often conceal far more than they reveal at first glance. That is, in fact, what these islands are: entrance gates to the underworld. There is a spot, tucked away in the mangroves’ dense interweaving. It carries a name of the past and it captures golden sparks from the sky: there is where our world ends, and another begins. One sunny afternoon, a while back, we took the boat around a secret corner, the mangroves made way for us in a narrow corridor of underwater roots. There were fish playing hide and seek in the shades, small lemon sharks making their way in between our legs. Looking at them, swimming the roads of the mangroves, I felt as if I were looking at a familiar sight. It felt like home. Growing up, I have learnt to pace my steps in between the high mountains and the infinite sea. I take comfort in knowing that it won’t matter where I stand, at home, I always hear the paternal murmuring of the waves coming from the close shore. Just like that, the small lemon sharks swim with confidence in the shallow waters, kings and queens of a hidden kingdom. There it sits, a land of none, a universe of quick silver motions, of scales painted in colours I have no words to describe, of wonder and charm. The world of Bimini expands from there, with shy rays hiding in the sand and fish of all kinds. There are snappers, jacks, surgeon fish, grunts, chubs, squirrel fish, ballyhoos, eels, turtles, trigger fish and many more. 

[Red Mangrove Roots - Photo by Chelle Blais]

If you’d ever been lucky enough to spend some time underwater you would know how magical it is. The body becomes light, the noise echoes into low tones, the movements are slower and all you ever knew becomes obsolete, unnecessary, as if legs and opposable thumbs were just a very rudimental accessory to the body. Freediving is the closest men will get to flying, that is my belief. Beyond the mangroves, there are depths of blue inhabited by the most beautiful of creatures. Sharks. In all their strength and beauty, they float below you gently, swifting their bodies from left to right, leaving you with nothing to do but marvel. And to each species its peculiarities, to each individual its quirks. I met a shark once, that would swim in the periphery of our sight, he is missing a big part of his dorsal fin, and he is a little pushy, a little arrogant, but I do like him. He reminds me of the people I grew up with. Then, there are the hammerheads whose presence is largely anticipated. They come with the cold and stay to sweeten the beginning of winter. They are all named after ancient gods and goddesses and carry with those names the elegance and the mysticism of stories they once belonged to. There are the nurse sharks, they always cause a bit of trouble, and if you ask about them everyone will scoff and they will say they are nothing but a problem. Personally, I quite enjoy knowing that in the depth of the ocean, within all the spectacular and the uncharted, there is a shark who reminds you of an annoying sibling, who always manages to be in the way. There are the blacktips, the blacknoses, the eagle rays and the big lemons, who look nothing like the baby ones. And there is the biggest of sharks: she is power and speed, all wrapped up in a voluminous body. As sharks go she is actually quite funny looking, as she glided through the blue, I could not help but think she looked as if a kid had drawn her. That is something very unique about Bimini: all things have character, nothing really is ever as it is meant to be. Leaves room for laughter, I think. 

[Bimini's Great Hammerhead Sharks - Photo by Chelle Blais]

The time flows strangely, so much so that it feels as if I have spent my whole life here surrounded by the mangroves and sharing the couch with a cheeky white dog. I’ll let the beauty of this place sink in, and I’ll carry it with me, on the edge of my lips, to tell whoever will listen that within two streams of water sit the strange islands of Bimini. No soil, no time and no shade to be found here. And yet, beneath the surface, a whole world to discover.