Bonus Chapter - Small Pond on a Large Pond

Bonus Chapter –
Small Pond on a Large Pond

We often imagine that travel is about seeing bigger places and grander sights. But perhaps that’s not quite right.

Join me aboard a ship in the Norwegian fjords as I discover that even among towering mountains, ancient glaciers and some of the most spectacular scenery on Earth, it is still the smallest moments that stay with us.

An invitation to linger a little longer, wander a little further, and rediscover the quiet sense of wonder that can so easily be lost in the rush of everyday life.
A quiet conversation. A patch of sunlight. A reminder that, wherever we find ourselves, we each carry our own small pond within us.

Wherever you are today, I hope you’ll find a quiet place to linger, the freedom to wander, and a reason to wonder.

By the way if you wish to see the video that accompanies this chapter you can find it by clicking on the link below which will take you to my Facebook page 

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BnXb5vJb6/

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to a bonus chapter of Big Skies and Small Ponds, a chapter inspired by my recent holiday. This is a small pond on a large pond, and I hope you enjoy it. Part one where the land lets go. We often think of a sea voyage beginning at that moment when the ship slips her moorings and leaves port. I'm no longer sure that's true. I think it begins when the land slowly stops shouting. Our first stop on this latest cruise to the fjords was Zebrugger. From on board, looking through the cafe window, I looked out across an industrial landscape, a forest of cranes towering high above warehouses and dockside machinery. Hardly the sort of view travel brochures dream about, yet it wasn't the industry that caught my attention. It was the birds. Gulls and terns patrolled the harbour with the confidence of creatures that had long since accepted humanity's intrusion. They skimmed over concrete and steel as though none of it mattered. Every so often a flash of white caught my eye as a bird wheeled into the light before disappearing again amongst the cranes. The turns were particularly impressive. They flew with astonishing agility, turning on a sixpence, and then gone from sight. Even in this industrial harbour, nature found a way to steal the scene. As we left Belgium behind, another forest appeared, a forest of wind turbines, great white towers rooted in the sea, their blades turning with quiet confidence as though harvesting something invisible, which of course they were. They stood like silent sentinels marking the edge of our familiar world. Then one by one they disappeared behind us. On we went. Roads had become coastline, coastline becomes sea, and then there is simply water. When I happened to notice we were somewhere off the coast of Ipswich, and it occurred to me that if I hadn't looked that up, we could have been anywhere. That's the magic of the sea. It is everywhere, and it is magnificently nowhere. At first glance it seems almost empty. The longer you watch the less empty it becomes. Even the smallest breaking waves wear tiny crowns of colour. As each crest curls over, for the briefest moment a miniature rainbow appears, hovering above the water before disappearing again. Hundreds of them tiny rewards for anyone prepared to search to notice. Perhaps that's true of life as well. The things that stay with us are often the things we almost overlook. One morning insomnia won. At five AM I opened the curtains instead of fighting for another hour's sleep. The sea was waiting. The ship rolled gently beneath me, not enough to disturb, just enough to remind me where I was. Almost as though the sea was quietly saying Don't forget I'm here. There was no hurry, no destination demanding attention, no expectation that I should do anything other than watch. It occurred to me that the sea has no interest in entertaining us. It doesn't perform, it doesn't seek approval, it simply goes on being itself. There is something deeply comforting about that. We spend so much of our lives measuring progress by arrival, the next meeting, the next birthday, the next holiday, the next chapter. But the sea has no such ambition. It is content simply to be. Perhaps we could learn something from that. We board a ship believing we're travelling to Norway, yet somewhere between Southampton and the Fjords something quieter happens. The sea gently removes the noise. The roads disappear, the buildings disappear, the wind turbines disappear until all that remains is water, sky, and ourselves. Perhaps that's why I love travelling by sea. Not because it takes me somewhere else, but because for a little while it reminds me that life doesn't always happen when we arrive. Sometimes life happens while we're simply travelling. The fiords asked to be listened to. At first they seem almost impossibly still. Their rocky faces carrying the memory of ice, storms, and centuries that make our visit seem wonderfully insignificant. There is an odd temptation to reach for the camera almost immediately. We want to prove we were here. We frame the mountains, press the shutter, and move on to the next view. And yet photographs never quite capture what we came for. They record the shape of the landscape, but not its presence. They cannot capture silence. They cannot hold the weight of cloud hanging over dark water or the almost imperceptible movement of the ship as it slips between mountains that have been waiting here since before history found words. Cloud belongs here. Perhaps I'm in a minority, but I find a fjord beneath low cloud more beautiful than one washed in sunshine. The sun can have a habit of bleaching colour, but cloud coaxes it into life. Greens deepen. A grey rock becomes a dozen different greys. The water loses some of its sparkle but gains mystery. More than anything, the cloud joins everything together. There is no hard line where mountain becomes sky, no clear boundary between earth, water and air. Instead they melt gently into one another as though the whole landscape has agreed to breathe with a single pair of lungs. High above the pine forests and waterfalls, the mountains still cradle the last scraps of snow, tiny from here, but impossible to ignore. They feel like signatures left by the departing winter, quietly reminding every passing ship that these valleys belong first to ice and then to us. The first waterfalls appear almost unexpectedly, not dramatic at first, just ribbons of white finding their own patient route down impossible cliffs, disappearing into forests before reappearing lower down, eventually surrendering to the sea. They have been making that journey for thousands of years. We simply happen to be passing today. The pine trees also seem determined to reach the water. From a distance they march silently down the mountainsides, stopping only where the rock finally refuses them any further passage. They seem less like a forest than an ancient gathering keeping watch over the water below. The villages hardly seem real. Tiny clusters of houses sit beneath mountains so vast they resemble models carefully placed by some mythological Norse god. Looking on from my balcony, everything appears both immense and miniature at the same time. There is a strange feeling that everything here is older than memory. The mountains have never needed to hurry. They have watched generations arrive, believing themselves important before quietly disappearing again. There is something deeply reassuring about such presence. Sometimes I find myself looking into the trees, not because I expect to see anyone there, but places like this awaken old stories. You are almost able to imagine forgotten eyes watching from the shadows as the great white ship glides through their silence. Not hostile, simply curious another brief visitor in a landscape that measures time so differently. Perhaps this is what the fjords really offer not just scenery perspective Part three The Morning The Fjord Chose Me We were due to pass the Seven Sisters Waterfall at half past five in the morning. I chose sleep. At first I wondered whether I was missing something special, then it occurred to me that the waterfall didn't need me there. Waterfalls without expectation of a witness. I closed my eyes. Sleep, however, had other ideas. It deserted me yet again. So instead I lay watching the quiet morning glide past my cabin window as we entered Geranga. This fjord felt different. The valley sides rose higher, steeper, leaning over us as though they had forgotten to stop growing. For a moment I found myself thinking not of maps or geology but of myths. It seemed entirely possible that somewhere beneath the dark water Ayar still watched over these ancient places. Landscapes like this don't just hold stories, they awaken them. There was nothing missing from the scene before me, and yet I still found myself hoping to glimpse the graceful arch of a whale's back before it disappeared on its own journey, paying us no attention whatsoever. Again I reminded myself nature has no need of an audience, it simply gets on being itself. The mountains weren't performing for us. We were simply fortunate enough to borrow a little time in their company. The waterfalls caught my eye, those white ribbons tumbling from impossible heights. But as I lingered I noticed other lines etched in the mountainside, great pale corridors where neither pine nor grass dared take hold, the paths of rockfalls and avalanches, worn smooth over centuries. They looked almost like motorways cut through the forest, a reminder that even mountains move. In the distance I saw a tiny village nestled so close to the shoreline it looked as though the whole community had wandered down to dip their toes into the icy dark water. I recalled that yesterday the receding tide had quietly revealed golden sandbanks scattered with the white feathery accents of resting birds. It reminded me that fjords breathe. One waterfall held my attention for several minutes. White against the dark rock, it suddenly vanished into cloud, as though it had ceased to exist altogether. Then lower down it found the mountainside once more, and reappeared, transformed into frothing white water. High above, little white cloud slowly climbed the mountainside, like a lost lamb trying to rejoin the fluffy flock waiting overhead. I knew there was a perfectly good scientific explanation, warm air rising, then cooling, condensing into cloud, but somehow in this place facts seemed less important than wonder. Sometimes the heart deserves a turn at describing what the eyes have seen. At the end of its cataclysmic descent, the waterfall slipped gently into Aigea's embrace. The frenzy was over. The water became calm, dark, and still until almost without noticing it begins reflecting the very cliffs that had given it birth. I know it's very human to want to climb mountains. As coaches carried passengers towards cable cars and summits, I found myself strangely content to remain in the valley. Looking up somehow felt more natural to admire this majesty. Not a better view, perhaps, maybe a humbler one. Perhaps some places aren't meant to be conquered, perhaps they're meant to be received. Meanwhile the soundtrack to my waterfall videos wasn't bird song or rushing water. It was Mrs. B gently snoring. Every so often she'd stir, open an eye, catch sight of another impossible waterfall sliding past our cabin window, and she'd whisper a sleepy wow, smile to herself and promptly fall asleep again. No travel documentary would leave that in, but I wouldn't dream of taking it out, because this isn't really a story about Norway. It's a human story set in nature. And as the ship rounded each bend I realised something else. I wasn't saying wow. Instead I simply found myself shaking my head in quiet disbelief. Every new vista looked, on paper, remarkably similar to the last, the same towering cliffs, the same dark water, the same waterfalls, and yet every bend left me longing for another. More more not because I wanted something different. Because beauty somehow refused to become ordinary. An hour had passed without my notice. I had chosen sleep but sleep had deserted me. Perhaps it had somewhere more important to be. Or perhaps the sand man had quietly conspired with the old spirits of this place, deciding that this morning wasn't meant for dreaming, but for watching. Whatever the reason, I'm glad he did. The Fiord teaches or reminds us reminds me that in nature I find my greatest sense of peace. I didn't feel insignificant. I felt included. Little me was part of this vastness. And just for a moment I stopped carrying the cares of the world, and I simply became part of it. Yes, some mornings ask us to close our eyes, others ask us simply to look. Big skies and small ponds with Drew Baxter. As we left the fjord, a handful of ribs darted across the water, bouncing over the swell with effortless confidence. Our ship sounded our horn. The note rolled down the fjord, echoed from mountain to mountain, and for just a moment the twenty first century disappeared. Suddenly those little boats weren't ribs at all. They were Viking longships. I could almost hear answering horns carried back by the echoes. I half expected Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis to stand in the prow of one of them, waving cheerfully before bouncing deliberately across our wake, as though they were off to raid somewhere just around the next headland. Then the spell broke. They were tourists in waterproofs, not film stars, and we were simply another ship leaving the fjord. But for a few wonderful seconds history and imagination shared the same stretch of water. You know, Norway is famous for many things, including bilberries, cloud berries, and lingenberries. Somewhere on this voyage I seem to have cultivated a new species because I've acquired a taste for linger berries. They're impossible to find on any botanical map, but their effects are unmistakable. They slow you down, they encourage you to notice, they tempt you to meander, and if you're not careful, they leave you meandering and wandering long after you've returned home. Thank you for listening to this bonus chapter of Big Skies and Small Ponds. It is my hope to be with you all again very soon. Chapter eleven awaits. Until then, enjoy writing and living your own stories.