On St. Martin, people are all too aware of natural disasters. We have been keeping a close eye on every possible storm since Hurricane Irma. We are trying to deal with the sargassum washing up on the beach in huge amounts. We have seen unusually dry seasons in most of the last five years. We …
Word travels fast on an island. It always has—before WhatsApp, before Facebook, before the Internet and before there was a newspaper on St. Martin. Sharing knowledge with neighbors was key to survival back when the island wasn’t a quick plane ride from the rest of the world. Over time, this shared knowledge forms the culture …
Nights may never sound the same on St. Martin. We will still have the piercing thweet of the Whistling Frog, the cackling of the Cuban Tree Frog and the harsh buzzing of the Money Bug. But a new sound is echoing out on rainy nights. It is a low-pitched honk, as if from a giant …
St. Martin’s ponds are rich. They are alive. They are always changing. They are a cornerstone of both human and natural life on the island. Ponds concentrate life. Rain falls in the hills, washes down the guts and flows into the ponds. Leaves and dirt come with it—nutrients, the stuff of life. In the pond, …
A young couple gets married. A man holds a fishing trophy. A crowd inspects a portion of bridge that collapsed. A young girl stands on the beach with a handbag. A pier full of people looking to see who wins the boat race. One man throws a net, another cleans a fish. A woman talks …
The Old House has been part of the St. Martin landscape for hundreds of years. The first known record of it is from 1766. The foundations of this house are from this era. In the census of 1772, it was the most valuable estate on the French side. Crops included 2,000 coffee plants, 1,000 banana trees and …
When local birder Binkie van Es spotted a pair of flamingos hanging out on the pond behind Orient Beach, people got excited. You don’t have to be an avid birder to love the idea of flamingos on St. Martin. Many were also curious about where they came from and what they were doing here. St. …
In the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, there is a key scene in a Cairo cafe. The evil archaeologist Belloq holds out a cheap watch and says that if he buries it for a thousand years it will become priceless. Although his character was on the wrong side of history, he had a point. …
St. Martin is full of cities with stories. We know their past and their present day identity. For a small island, it has a surprising number of distinct cultural centers. That’s one of the things that makes it such a great place to live or visit. Philipsburg was a center of salt production in the …
St. Martin is full of cities with stories. We know their past and their present day identity. For a small island, it has a surprising number of distinct cultural centers. That’s one of the things that makes it such a great place to live or visit. Philipsburg was a center of salt production in the …