Canadian Waters, on the M/V Matanuska
This morning I woke in heaven. With ear-plugs in, I had been having thick, looped conversation dreams – then I opened my eyes. Blue green shot with silver white cloud tresses; the stately rise of thickset mountains from a bullet-grey ocean through which we are slowly ploughing. On both sides the views roll in and I laugh out loud in pure pleasure. I’ve woken in Paradise – little did I know it was to be found up the Alaska Marine Highway. Surrounding me is thirty beautiful sleeping youngsters (as I now affectionately think of them). Last night they were too consumed by the out-loud reading of ‘A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ to be smoking cones or bonking eachother. I am warm as toast under the heaters and with thirty hot breaths around me in the yellow Perspex solarium bubble; however the warmth does not tempt me to linger. I slide out of my bag, collecting every layer of clothing I possess, and toddle through the mesh of bodies to come standing on the open deck in socks, red shoes in one hand.
The stars and stripes flap in the freezing wind. My bed-warmth slowly thickens into an awake coldness. Our wake – a soft wide mark of foam on the water, reminiscent of yesterday’s cappuccino, is exhaled from the bowels of the steady Matanuska, stretching out, fading from white to an absence of ripples – a snail-trail on the water’s surface. Around us pine-clad mountains, low, affectionate mist hugging curves, and super-white snow honoring the crowns. I am in the North Country.
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