Day off yesterday. Deep seasonal depression.

I took the express bus to Horseshoe Bay, bought what I thought was a ticket for the 1pm sailing to Nanaimo at 12:58pm, and ran the length of the elevated gangway to the empty departure lounge.

Next sailing, 3pm, said the schedule in the locked glass cabinet.

Out into Horseshoe Bay, rain falling steadily now. I went into Troll's for lunch, the local fish-and-chip fixture. There were very few people out on Horseshoe Bay's streets, and even fewer in the local stores, but Troll's was jammed with people my parents' age and older. I was the only person on my own, and the only person reading (Anthony Caro, The Path to Power, volume 1 of his Lyndon Johnson memoirs, which I'd bought earlier that morning along with a Nanaimo map in a downtown bookstore).

The young waitress tried to talk the American couple beside me out of going to Bowen Island.

"There's a garage where you can leave your car," she said. "And on a sunny day, yeah, sure, I'd say go. But today?" She gestured at the empty, rainswept street outside, at Howe Sound, which, beyond the ferry dock, simply vanished into grey mist. "There's nothing there," she said. "I mean, there's trails and things--" But the Americans were shaking their heads.

An hour in the departure lounge, Caro and the Times.

An hour and a half on the ferry. Grey ocean, light chop, low grey clouds hovering just above the water.

Into Departure Bay at twenty to five. Clouds gathering overhead, the day drawing down. Grey mist in the air, promising rain to come.

The half-hour walk into downtown Nanaimo, whose stores close promptly at five. Rain more insistant now.

Waiting for the city bus that never arrived.

Hiking back to Departure Bay in steady rain. Mushroom gardens at the side of the road!


- posted by cjb @ 9:52 PM