It’s high summer, and island life is a-calling. Islands are reoccurring in literature - from Homer’s Ithaca, to the island living feral and misshapen Caliban, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, all the way to, of course, Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island. Perhaps because they exist with their own rules; ready to be bent, or conform to. Islands are ready to appear, and disappear - they sift into your imagination, and quietly con you into seeing things that might not be real. Or are they simply revealing the monsters and gods inside us? Islands offer a place where magic exists, and where we become sovereigns by sundown. They reveal who we are, think The Beach with Tilda Swinton, Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island or even, Jurassic Park.
What the island fantasy represents is a place for us to escape civilization, and to be able to isolate ourselves from our world - with the hope (I mean, barely a lick and a wish) to reflect on who we are…from a safer yonder. But you know what happens in HG Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau, and in The Lord of the Flies. Sometimes the island wins.
I once wrote a piece for Vogue about private islands - and visited them all, for research, naturally - and am always dreaming of having my own. I mean, how hard could it be to procure one?
I’ve ventured to more than 100 islands across the globe - from Greenland, to dozens of Greek pearls, all the way to Japan’s art island Naoshima and also ones with no names. Off Amanpulu, in the Cuyo Archipelago of northern Palawan in the Philippines, I’ve found myself alone on a shoal (let’s just call it a temporary sandy island) reflecting on my own fugaciousness. I am here now; to love, to live and to fuck it up - because the tide is always ready to come in. Sometimes wisdom can be so obvious, just too ready for you to blink and see it.
Listen to my podcast about another interesting island, hometown of Cristiano Ronaldo, Madeira.
The Caribbean Island You’ve Never Heard Of
Maybe you’ve never heard of Saba before. But this tiny Caribbean island is purring, even setting up an Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion system to generate electricity and produce drinking water for the island. Pretty forward thinking for a five-square-mile island dubbed “rock” in Arawak Indian. Christopher Columbus supposedly sighted it in 1493 - and in fact, these very craggy shores are what deterred the explorer from alighting.
When the Spanish arrived around 1493, many of the island inhabitants were removed and taken as slaves to work in other parts of the Caribbean, which continued to happen until the 1800s with colonialism. Although evidence was found that Caribs and Arawak Indians inhabited the island, it was in 1635 that the French claimed the “unspoiled Queen” for King Louis XIII of France. Dutch settlers soon after populated there and it has been in their possession for roughly 355 years today.
The Netherlands’ smallest special municipality (officially called a “public body”) is just a 12-minute flight south of the more widely known Sint Maarten (also owned by the Dutch) and northwest of the increasingly popular Saint Kitts and Nevis. But thanks to a small airport, lack of a real harbor and sheer cliffs all around, it’s in no danger of being discovered any time soon.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not enticing for explorers looking to enjoy the Caribbean without all the traffic: Saba is basically a tropical forest island soaring 5,000 ft. from the sea floor. A potentially active volcano overlooks the red roofed cottages of its four major settlement towns, including the capital dubbed un-ironically “The Bottom.” White washed or stone exteriors, red zinc roofs, decorative Caribbean gingerbread trim and green shutters define Saba’s architecture—along with a law that dictates the island’s aesthetics.
Outside of the main towns and mountain villages most of the island’s 1,800 inhabitants call home, a forest paradise is filled with rare, tropical foliage. Wild orchids and donkeys occupy the island’s old stone paths and steps. These island paths were created by the island's residents before the vehicular roads were built, connecting pathways and steps made of the local volcanic rocks, as well as pathways crisscrossing the mountainside to the farmlands where the produce was then farmed.
If it all looks a little familiar, it’s with good reason. Saba’s silhouette was used in the original “King Kong” movie of the 1930s. At the beginning of the film, it serves as the backdrop for the colossal gorilla’s “Skull Island” home.