Tuesday, May 23, 2017

ballaine

"The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself."

As we boarded, a Spanish-speaking couple asked me if we were getting on the big boat. No, I told them. The tiny raft.
Lured by promises of minke whales, humpbacks, and beautiful belugas, we boarded a tiny zodiac. Most of the trip, we bounced around enormous waves, clinging to the chairs and clutching our cameras. 

The Spanish speaking man had a selfie stick.
Is that a whale? The driver spoke mostly French. I saw a fin I thought was a dolphin.

This was as well as I did. A spout! (Good thing we have whales in California.)


 Grateful for scopolamine.
Finally we turned into Saguenay fjord. As Denis mentioned, it's the only fjord in the Americas. (Or did he say North America?)
The seals were sunbathing and showing off. A selkie!
 
The canyon walls on either side of the gorge are about 1000 feet high.
 
There were clouds hovering inside the fjord.
 And then, just as quickly, sun.


"It is not down in any map; true places never are."
 As close as I got to a whale today. It felt good to take off my XXL construction clothes. The pot of gold is on the south shore of the St. Lawrence.

On the way back, I made a stop at L'Isle aux Coudres, where the ciderie is located. To get there, you drive onto a car ferry (like a moving bridge) and glide across the baie. Like so much of the eastern St. Lawrence, it is exquisite country. A world apart.
"Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?" —Moby-Dick 

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