SM 101
 

Place

I have lived here for a year now, and I must say, in spite of the cold, it is a great place.  There seems to be so much here.  So much more stuff, more environment, than there was in Sweden.  That sounds illogical, because after all there must be the same amount of environment everywhere - earth, sky, weather, buildings.  But somehow the terrain here gives the impression of there being more.  You can see more of it because of the hills after all.  There is more variety.  I can see it all from my kitchen window.  And I can feel even more from the garden, which slopes up above the house.  The morning air; the afternoon air; the birds. The town laid out below.  First thing in the morning, when all the street lights are glittering and the sky is getting light and everything has a pink misty glow; if the water is still you can see all the lights reflected in the harbour.  It is quite different later in the day when the sun catches the buildings and turns them white, and you can see the green sheep paddocks beyond.

This morning, looking down the coast at the blue sea and the steep bluff beyond St Clair, and beyond that again to the distant coastline catching the sun, I noticed some of the buildings at the top of the bluff reflecting the sunrise in their windows as brightly as little orbs themselves.  There were two of them this morning.  And on the distant coastline, 20 kilometres or so away, I could see another, even from here.

The distant one was so clear, it almost filled me with doubt.  Perhaps it was a ship really - how could I possibly see a reflecting window from so far?  But I knew it couldn't be a ship.  Why would any ship be around here?  That is the one funny thing about this place.  The one really cold thing.  There are never any ships to be seen at sea.  There is nowhere to go to, no shipping lanes for trade.  There is nothing but empty ocean between us and the southern ice cap.  Only the cold empty waves all the way to Antarctica.