Ferry Crossing

The ropes are cast off. The gap between the ferry and the dock widens.

And you are underway.

There is a particular moment when a boat leaves shore. When the connection to land breaks. When the water that has been a backdrop becomes the entire world. The dock is behind you now, becoming smaller. In front of you, the crossing. However long. However wide. Water between here and there.

You are on the upper deck. Most passengers are inside. The windows of the interior deck show faces behind glass, warm light, the smell of coffee and frying food drifting from the cafeteria. But out here, the air is extraordinary. Salt and engine exhaust and the particular freshness of open water, a smell that clears the sinuses and wakes every part of the face.

The wind is constant. Not violent. Steady. Strong enough to require effort to face directly. Your hair moves. Your jacket presses against you. The cold is real but you do not mind it because the view requires this exposure. You cannot see this from behind glass.

The wake fans out behind the ferry in a wide V. White water turning to pale green turning to the dark grey-blue of deeper water. Seagulls follow. They are not begging. They are riding the uplift created by the vessel, using it as a winged animal uses a thermal. Effortless. They keep pace with the ferry without a wingbeat, suspended in the air above the wake.

The shore you left is already small. Its specific details, the names of the buildings, the individual faces, the particular sounds, have dissolved into a line. A suggestion of land. Soon it will merge with the horizon and there will be nothing visible in any direction except water.

The far shore is not yet visible. You are in the middle. Neither here nor there. The crossing is a country in itself. Existing only in motion. Existing only for the duration of this journey.

Lean on the railing. Feel the salt water on your lips, carried by the air, left by the spray that occasionally leaps from the bow. Look at the horizon. The perfectly flat line that the sea draws between itself and the sky. A line you know is not really flat. A line that curves, almost imperceptibly, with the curvature of the earth.

There is nowhere to be right now except here. You cannot leave the ferry midcrossing. You cannot arrive early. The water will take the time it takes. This is not a problem. It is a release. The schedule has been handed to the sea.

In the distance, the far shore appears. Just a dark line. Then shapes. A lighthouse. A cliff. The crossing is ending, which means arrival is coming. A new place. New ground under your feet. The world on the other side.

But not yet. For one more minute, the railing, the wind, the wake, the open water.

Let the sea carry you. It knows the way.

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