The Morning Commute Along The Coast
By: Kae Smith
Tags: Prose, Morning, Coast, Scuzzbucket, Fantasy

The Morning Commute Along The Coast

Photo by Ali Kazal on Unsplash

There are two buses, the number one and the #90 express — the express follows the same route, just skipping a few stops. It’s not a hard route to follow; the bus weaves and carves along the two lane highway, the only road connecting the ferry to any of the small towns between it and the next boat.

The #90 comes from the ferry at 7:45am; I hop on closer into town, heading North up the coast to the end of the line, another town, slightly bigger. I’m armed with headphones and soft music, the soundtrack to the forests and the two lane blacktop.

There’s already a few morning travellers seated when I get on, strangest of all the ones who came from the boat after their overseas morning commute. Most people go the other way; heading to the mainland for work, but a rare few will trek from the big city to the coast. You’ve seen them. You know they exist. You just don’t know why. You can spot them easily: practical shoes, backpacks with plastic covers for protection from the ever present rain, fully charged headphones for the bumpy commute from boat to bus. They seem ready for anything, prepared to face the wild of the coast.

Grumpy men in fishermen sweaters, women with grey hair and flip phones, children travelling alone and youth with backpacks carrying their earthly belongings make up the rest of my fellow passengers. This isn’t the public transit of the city; this is the coast, and here the forest people live. A little harder, a little gruffer. Those who don’t drive here are few and far between so those who board the bus do so with a purpose— these are the people who rarely need to go out, who get by with the stops along the highway and nothing else.

All the windows are open, and the thick sea breeze whirls around the interior, carrying on it’s back the scent of damp dirt and musty wool, salty and strong. The bus is quieter than the one’s in the city; no idle chitchat, no music blaring from headphones. Like everything here, it’s softer, quieter, noise dampened by the trees.

The stops are few and far between, often just a gravel pull out on the side of the blacktop, with intricately carved wooden chairs, or gently donated folding furniture placed with the knowledge that no matter which bus you’re taking, you’ll be waiting a while. Most are nestled in the dark trees, a few kilometers from any driveways, cabins or street lights.

It’s hard to fathom who gets off at these stops, which forest people are taking public transit; what shadowy creatures. There’s signs posted all along the stops, shrouded in the shade of the big pines, begging passengers to press the rusty buttons attached to the posts when traveling in the night to alert the driver, lest they pass them by without a spare glance. Without the dinging bell, I doubt these people would be seen; they’d simply retreat back into the forest and never emerge again.

One of the men with a thick sweater and thicker beard gets off at one of these middle of nowhere stops and just looks into the woods before starting to trek down the highway on the dirt shoulder. He looks like he belongs there.

It’s thirty minutes on the dark forest road from the boat to the end of the line, while the sky begins to brighten with the day. Peeking into the trees as we pass by, there are the twinkling Christmas lights still on from the night before. The houses they belong to are hidden by thick growth, but the shining yellow winks at us as we race past.

The ocean peaks in through the trees on the other side; there’s a few minutes where the road slides right along side it, the pale flat grey of sea water, and the hint of the big island on the horizon. Wind carries low hanging fog across it, and for a moment, I can’t take my eyes off it. It’s just the ocean, the forest, the early morning air…

…and me. The drifter, the new one, not born and bred in these salt soaked woods, just looking for a place to land. Both invisible and hyper noticed for my otherness, I sit in the back corner, observing my brethren of morning riders. I don’t belong, but I want to. I see wooded stops and mossy phone lines, and I want to just back myself into the trees, into the cabins, into the sea. But the true myths are the locals, the ones who’ve lived like this forever; and I am eternally passing through.