Oceans of Time

I’m not sure exactly when my five-year-old’s blossoming vocabulary was replaced with an embryonic version of Chris Rock’s stand-up, but the evidence can’t be denied. Visit my house lately and you’d think every word in English were derived from “bum” or “poo.”

I quickly come to understand that these two words represent not just a suggestion, but the very guiding spirit of the island itself. Standing at the ferry docks in Bermuda’s capital of Hamilton trying to determine how to get to Belmont Hills Golf Club, I ask the man at the desk several questions in a way that to me feels amiable and easygoing — typically Canadian, in other words. But the accumulating stares in my direction hint that, in this place, my manner counts as mildly aggressive. I learn an important lesson: You don’t ask questions rapidly in Bermuda. Pauses — the deliberate stretching out of time, the appreciation of the spaces between words — still matter here.

I travel across the harbour admiring the stately homes of native limestone painting the hillside like a pastel rainbow. My fellow passengers sport brightly coloured outfits imitating the hillside display, making my gray golf shirt seem terrifically drab.

At Belmont Hills — with eight courses, Bermuda boasts the most courses per square mile in the world — I am greeted by a clubhouse coloured emerald on its lower half and peach on its upper. Darren, my host for the round, exhibits what will be the first of numerous accent variations I will encounter, a reflection of the diversity of cultures that has over four centuries provided Bermuda its current populace. Darren’s variant sounds British through the first syllable before sliding into a more Caribbean inflection.

Though I’ve been told Bermuda remains underappreciated, a constant second fiddle to the West Indies, I believe it only when I see I’m one of just a handful of players enjoying this magnificent golf course, which includes a vast ocean panorama encompassing many of Bermuda’s smaller islands, themselves numbering over 130. Beyond me is a foursome whose shirts are respectively royal blue, sky blue, lime and salmon; behind me, a pair in plaid shorts and bright yellow tops. It’s a slight relief to know that the looks I’ve been getting have not to do with my dismal golf game but my subdued clothing.

In the afternoon I take a taxi to Horseshoe Bay Beach (the island’s eco-mindedness prevents tourists from renting cars), the most frequented among the gorgeous beaches lining Bermuda’s South Shore. My driver’s variation of the accent features elevated vowels and a more distinct English lilt at the end. Other than this suggestion of influence and the island’s geographical names — Warwick Parish, Devonshire, Trimmingham Road — you’d hardly guess this were a British territory.

As I’m driven along the rock-walled streets whose clusters of pink hibiscus fold themselves closed every night and open again every morning, my driver proudly tells me he considers Bermuda the last remnant of the Garden of Eden. Arriving at the beach, I don’t doubt him. The dreamily soft sand really is tinted pink — the product of a tiny red-skeletoned organism called red foram that grows under rocks — and the water is, as advertised, astonishingly turquoise, a result of low levels of phytoplankton combined with the absence of sediment-transporting rivers.

At Horseshoe Bay I meet an insurance agent who tells me that, after being transferred from New York, it took him a year to get used to “Bermuda Time.” He is now accustomed to it — enjoys it, even. In my mind I realize that my hometown of Toronto, infinitely slower than New York, still moves infinitely faster than Bermuda.

By nightfall I am, like all novice visitors to the island, mesmerized by the loudness of the crickets’ strident chorus outside my window. I learn from the concierge that these featured players in Bermuda’s nightly symphony are not crickets at all, but the acorn-sized “whistling frogs” that made their accidental way from the Lesser Antilles over a century ago. Resembling a million-strong choir of fifes, this powerful concert is so cherished by locals that a recent CD of the whistling frog has even become a hit on the Bermuda charts.

When I emerge in a fog the next morning, the concierge offers a sympathetic grin, advising I visit in winter next time. The nightly symphony begins in April, peaks in the wettest month, October, and stops abruptly when the temperature dips below 68 Fahrenheit — though particularly warm winter evenings can inspire a haunting revival.

He also advises that I make my way around the island leisurely. To rush a visit to Bermuda would be fundamentally at odds with its soul. So over the next few days I take my time, trying to fully appreciate each spot I visit. Settled by shipwrecked English sailors on their way to Virginia’s Jamestown colony in the early 17th century, Bermuda occupies just over 20 square miles of land, but that land, shaped like a reclining seahorse, bends and curls expansively around a network of sounds, harbours and the Atlantic Ocean. As any Bermudian would advise, dashing from place to place is tantamount to not seeing the island at all.

I spend time in the Town of St. George’s (located within the parish of St. George, on the island of St. George), a living testament to the island’s origins and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I marvel at the Crystal & Fantasy Caves in Hamilton Parish, a silent world of fantastic beauty whose floating pontoon pathways span a 55-foot-deep azure underground lake — one of the discoveries that prompted Mark Twain to write, “You can go to Heaven if you like. I’ll stay right here in Bermuda.” I explore a sunken galleon, one of 400 shipwrecks off the Bermudian coast. I even go helmet diving, an authentically Bermudian experience in which one walks along the sandy bottom of sheltered waters while viewing exquisite reefs and a thrilling variety of tropical fish.

On my last day, I repeat the pattern of the first, golfing in the morning, this time at dazzling Mid Ocean, one of the world’s top-ranked courses, then enjoying an afternoon of pristine sand and cerulean water at Elbow Beach, near the middle of the seahorse’s spine. Lying at the shoreline, I relish the feel of the waves lapping against my toes and the rhythm of easy conversation around me. When it’s time to leave, I promise myself to take a little of Bermuda home.

For one thing, I’m going to ask questions more slowly.

National Post 

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I.J. Schecter
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© I.J. Schecter 2003