02 Jan 2021 - Graham
previously: postcard 8: nw coast
I prefer when we are moving. My preference is one part homesickness and one part whatever the opposite of seasickness is. To be sure, I got a bit queasy this morning after a regrettably rich cafeteria breakfast of eggs and potatoes. But since then, I’ve been comforted by the ship engines’ humming heartbeat, and the inside passage dulls the waves for a mild, sleep-inducing sway.
This morning is busy, the many small to medium sized children are eager to escape their rooms, which are just glorified closets. I like the simplicity of my closet, but I too am eager, eager for food, caffeine, and sunlight. The coffee is $1.75 with a free refill, which is perhaps the perfect price. The sun is delayed, but once it starts cooking off some of the fog, the dozen of us not hiding in our rooms make our way to the forward viewing area–a theater with windows in place of screens.
“So abundant and novel are the objects of interest in a pure wilderness that unless you are pursuing special studies it matters little where you go, or how often to the same place. Wherever you chance to be always seems at the moment of all places the best; and you feel that there can be no happiness in this world or in any other for those who may not be happy here.”
I had read Muir before, but stopped at his Alaska journals finding them slow moving and trying to prove a point I didn’t disagree with. I find him more compelling as I trace his path 140 years later, on a slightly larger ship, but at about the same pace. His descriptions of this place and his ecstasy in it helps me better appreciate my surroundings. I’m tempted to just see “lots of tree” and “wow big snowy mountains’’ and “oooh more island” and even grow tired with the repetition of such beauty; but now Muir has me wondering about the species of the trees and how the fjords were shaped by glaciers and about the once rich lives of the indigenous people who still live here, though certainty in a way much changed since Muir visited them.
I am ready to leave the boat. Yesterday morning we passed Glacier Bay, the most exciting views of the trip yet, and then struck out into the less sheltered and far choppier Bay of Alaska.
There was much hurling. Thankfully I had skipped breakfast, so my hurl was mild and I was able to aid some of the more afflicted with saltines and ginger ale. But I was bored because even with meds, reading and writing and puzzling, my main activities thus far, have become impossible. Finally, I remember my audiobooks and spent the day in the dark listening to White Fang London’s perspective on the Northland is slightly more brutal than Muir’s.
“The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: Eat Or Be Eaten. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralize about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law…”
As I write, we have reached the Prince William Sound and the waters calm again. Eating is again possible and there’s a fresh wave of socializing over our shared day of turbulence and boredom. Masks and covid had made small social pleasantries seem rude and, lacking a new etiquette, most people opted for loneliness. But on this last day, many friends are made, albeit just in time for an early debarkation.
next post: postcard 10: jubilee