Waiting for the Ferry to Stårheim
Sit back and silence the engine. Take a moment and bow your head against the wheel. Give thanks.
You are safe from the twists and the turns of the road and of life. You have crossed over bridges and through mountain tunnels and now you must wait. You are alone in this world, so take a moment to step outside and breathe in that feeling. Look back at the road winding up the mountain. It will be some time before another car passes and the ferry is some way off. This is your moment of silence – your prayer to the sea before you, the land beyond, and the skies above.
Gentle waves lap against the shore by the dock. Short trees keep silent watch over the water, stoic in their duty in the cold of fading autumn. A lone gull floats on the air high above the sea staring into the black water for a morsel as the repeating cadence of C#5 from a rope upon a flagpole in the breeze keeps the imperfect swinging time of the passing seconds. Clouds loom dark and grey in the heavens above so that the jagged lines of the mountains along the horizon cast no shadows.
Resist the temptation to check your phone for news or updates. Your family and friends are in another time; this is not their time. This is you. This is your turn to go from over here to over there. It is a place that before today you had never heard of, but hereafter will never forget. These are the small patches of earth that all that you love will never see. The smell of these shells on the rocks and this wind are the souvenirs you will carry with you from this place forever, so open your pack and make room for them. Notice the crunch of your boots on the loose pebbles grinding along the asphalt as you explore every inch of the dock. Leave no footprints, but let every foot of every surface below you print itself upon you – the street, the sticks and twigs and the mud of the patch of dirt off the side of the road, and the damp moss upon the rocks that fall into the sea. You are the lucky one. These are your moments where the world turns slow like the moments of love and longing and the youth that you still cling to. Do not let the dark that is all about you diminish the memory of those green grasses and blue skies of the summers of innocence that have gone. Above all, do not let that same darkness rob you of the promise of the great love to come even if you know more truths now than you did then.
On this small patch of rock, left waiting for a ferry to carry you along, there is no one to judge you. There are no expectations and no demands here, so remember to be mindful and ready to burden those responsibilities when it is time. They will doubt you, they may even denounce you. They simply do not know because they do not know what it means to be left waiting when time has stopped. Call to mind every wish yet to be fulfilled and every regret for which to seek redemption. Ask for forgiveness, be prepared even to beg, but most of all be ready to forgive. It is forgiveness that is exclusively human and upon it alone does our own humanity depend.
Look for a crack in the clouds above and keep a careful watch for that shimmering speck of sunlight crashing through the sky. Feel the sound of the motor on the ship in the distance as it begins to reverberate through the asphalt. There are cracks in everything letting the hope through. What happened to the last words that you heard? What happened to that long road stretching out across a country far from here that your heart just cannot leave? Call to mind the shouting and bloodthirsty screaming of flaring tempers that turned to tender whispers of love and friendship. All that is good seeps from your fingertips into the conscience of a cruel world because change is part of who we are. Every river striding down the mountain must bid farewell to the glacier from which it was formed. It is a long and winding journey for every drop but each one goes to where it belongs. They sink to the seabed to rise again to the surface before giving up and ascending to the heavens to be scattered in the rain with all of our ideas both the good ones and the bad ones. We are never long in one place and never really gone. Surrender and always be honest with your feelings, and never let a chance to tell someone that they are important slip away.
The ferry has its schedule to keep and there are others that seek the far shore along with you. The gears crack and grind into motion to lower the barrier of the dock as the ship spins into position. The rain has turned from thick steady droplets into a fine mist that forms into beads on your jacket. It is time to move on. Pull the latch that opens the door. Observe the dashboard and gauges. Start the engine. Pull the car forward 50 metres and stop and silence the engine again. It is time to let the ferry do the rest. That journey is over, but a new journey is set to begin on the far side. Never forget what you have lived through – a fifty-metre journey from pier to ferry – as important as every fifty-metre journey that led to it and that has yet to be travelled. So many moments of life slip through seemingly unnoticed so don’t let this one be forgotten.