Dearest Rachel –
So after a couple of days at sea – hey, at twenty-five knots, it takes a while to get anywhere from Greenland, let alone the North American continent – you might think we would be itching to get off the ship and onto dry land. And that may very well have been the case, if there was any dry ground for us to step off onto yesterday. But as we made our way into the Sydney harbor, while we could see the occasional house and church from our balcony, it was hard to see all that much further beyond them. I get that weather patterns flow from west to east, so it didn’t follow us from Nuuk, but it was foggy and rainy out there. Not the sort of thing that invites one to come ashore.
And it wasn’t just the weather that had us reluctant about stepping off just yet. As much as neither of us prefers to eat with others (Daniel in particular, but me too; it’s why I’ve indulged him in his preference to avoid the dining room. That, and the fact that he feels uncomfortable on formal nights, and neither of us prepared for 70s or 20s-themed nights – where do they come up with these, and who packs for stuff like this?), we did wind up being joined by a couple of German tourists at our table at a point early on in the trip. They expressed enthusiasm about places like Greenland, where they’d never been, but then told us that they’d visited Nova Scotia previously, warning us that Sydney, in particular, didn’t have a whole lot going on. Not the best endorsement for the place.
Still, this was our one chance to be here – we’re not likely to take this trip again in our lives – so we still thought we ought to get off the ship and take a look around if we could. Since we weren’t arriving until after ten, we were hoping the fog would burn off as the day wore on. However, as we pulled in to continued gray skies and cloud cover, we both started to wonder if it would clear up at all. And upon checking my weather app, we determined that, while the chance of rain was diminishing over time, the progress was so slow that, by the time it was down to only a fifty-percent likelihood, it would be time for us to board and set sail yet again. We agreed that it would be best to just go ashore and get on with it.
Despite having gotten off the ship within a half-hour of our being cleared for departure – so that we would have the maximum amount of time to take the place in, if it exceeded our expectations – we were back to the port within only a couple of hours. It was time enough to grab a small ‘lunch’ of some local fare, but otherwise there really wasn’t much to our day.
I want to make it clear that it’s not Sydney’s fault for the less-than-ideal weather conditions that prompted us to wrap things up that much quicker – unless, of course, these are typical weather conditions for them at this time of year. Either way, given only a handful of hours to take the place in, one has to give them the benefit of the doubt. At the same time, while pleasant conditions would have encouraged us to take more time and walk around further (we did get our ten thousand steps, regardless of the weather, so I’d like to think we gave the place a fair hearing), the fact that we managed to wander into empty spaces even during our short time there suggests that we’d seen enough of the place already.
As a quick sideline to the notes on our voyage; you might have noticed that I haven’t been filming my casting a few of your ashes as we go from port to port. Part of that is outright forgetfulness – I hadn’t brought you with in Qaqortoq, for instance, and while I made a point of putting your shaker in my jacket for our next stop, I took my other jacket when we got off in Nuuk – although I made a point in both cases to shake some out from our balcony, at the very least. However, it would seem that Daniel still isn’t keen on the idea of letting you go yet – he wouldn’t let me release more than about half your ashes into Schoolhouse Bay, you’ll recall, despite that being your actual wish – and so I have to do this surreptitiously. Filming the act feels like rubbing his face into the face, so I don’t do it while he’s with me (which is most of the time while we’re ashore). I don’t grasp why, exactly, he has such a problem with it – as Lars says, it’s only carbon at this point – but I have to be cautious under the circumstances. In any event, I mention this because I did sprinkle a few grains into the jetty along the harbor, but I didn’t film the moment, so as to not call his attention to it as we walked along. I don’t know what you’d say about either of our choices on this – it would be nice if you were to appear and announce your real preference to the both of us at some point – but this is how things are at the moment.
In any event, we’re about to make port at Halifax, so I need to wrap this up so that we can get on with that one. Keep an eye on us, honey, and wish us luck. We’re going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 