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October Ferry to Nanaimo
There’s something very big out there
I’m like an ant that’s gotten into the granary,
ludicrously happy, and trying to lug out
a grain that’s way too big. — Rumi, The Granary Floor
The whole ship vibrates
These battered hulks carry more people than our distant ancestors ever knew. Our brains are really only made to handle around 150 other people, they tell us, and a fully-loaded BC ferry holds more than 2000. Plastered in thick white marine paint and streaked with vibrant red rust, the ships plough doggedly through the gray waves of the Salish Sea, renamed since I moved here after the name Georgia Straight was deemed to be too colonial.
The city recedes. From the back of the ship’s car deck, red as a fingernail crusted with dried blood, you can watch the ever-growing towers of Vancouver vanish into the blue haze of the mountains behind them. Yesterday’s rain rises in tattered strands of fog from the watching trees. Tiny lights shine from the looping cables of the Lion’s Gate Bridge, but from here, it all looks like nothing. Some pointless vanity project on the edge of sliding into the sea and being forgotten.
While the ship thunders over the invisible depths below, leaving a boiling white wake pointing back to the harbor, the constant…
