There was no one else on the back of the boat but me and someone from Lafayette. His grandparents were farmers outside of Natchez, actually outside enough they were closer to Ferriday on that side of the River. I was freezing, almost starting to shake. It was wonderful. “So this is why you didn’t go back,” I kind of joked. He was wearing a jacket.
The Salish Sea, Polaroid 600 (all photos in July 2022)
I had boarded the ferry from Seattle to Victoria in British Columbia at dawn to see what there was to see. Most of my travel is by car, every now and then by airplane, and boat was a new one to me. Victoria looked pretty in the pictures and a band I kind of wanted to see was playing while I would be there. I spent days fiddling with the ArriveCAN app on my phone and declaring what pier I would be at, what flavor shots I had received and when. I hoped it would be worth it.
The Royal Scot, Victoria, B.C., Polaroid 600
It was worth it. The act of travel itself is a muscle that must be flexed, or risk atrophy. Travel is also the touchstone of a large part of my photography, the gas in the tank. I was hoping this trip would renew me in the midst of an especially sweltering Mississippi summer, one where the sun blasted the delicate yellow-orange blossoms of my squash to grey ribbons in just three days, where the very act of breathing seemed an act of rebellion.
Victoria, Polaroid SX-70
This lovely seaside town was the perfect antidote. After a flare of panic at the hotel restaurant, when none of my cards worked—which turned out to be a fluke—I walked to the nearest bank and withdrew a chunk of flamboyant Canadian cash. I marveled at the plasticky feel, the bright colors, the transparent stripe. The slick bills quickly transformed to a pocket full of change,1 all of which seemed to feature Elizabeth Windsor.
I loved the jangle in my pocket, that there were two and one dollar coins, how long they seemed to stay in circulation. Just one day’s worth of dimes spanned sixty years, featuring portraits of Elizabeth at ages 39 and 64, crowned and uncrowned, a little more and then a little less shoulder. As a stranger to this iconography of empire, its symbols were obscure to me, and seemed pleasantly mysterious.
Chinatown, Victoria, Polaroid SX-70
The weather was a balm. It seemed effortless to just walk places—a mile seemed like a block, and shade wasn’t just to stave off a sunburn but offered a noticeable drop in temperature. I would still be sweating after carrying my shoulder bag packed with film and two Polaroids (about 6 pounds fully loaded), but it was a normal sweat, not just sweating because I dared to walk twenty feet to the car in the afternoon. I kept making silent vows to myself that I would always head North during the apex of the summer.
The best phone booth of all time, Chinatown, Victoria, Polaroid SX-70
One night I walked to the movies. Before it began there was a message that acknowledged we were on the land of the First Nations. The film starred a stunning Penelope Cruz and a harried Antonio Banderas. She played an overbearing director, and he was an action star trying for a dramatic turn. The screen would flood with her face, her character’s gigantic main of curly red hair, and I would almost miss the dialogue, which I had to read, entranced by the image.
Alix Goolden Performance Hall, Victoria, Polaroid SX-70
Another night I walked over to an old church, now converted to an arts venue, to see the Zombies. “She’s Not There” and “Time of the Season” were played a lot on the radio when I grew up in Birmingham, and when I moved to Jackson I had some friends at Musiquarium who were absolutely obsessed with Odessey and Oracle. I figured at the very least it would be something fun to do.
What was unexpected, and a delight, was how vital and communal the show was. In line I fell in with a group of women in their fifties and sixties who had met while following around the Moody Blues. They would then join up and go see bands in different places in Canada and the United States. I mostly got teased but earned a little respect by having gone to see Bob Dylan a few months before.
The concert itself was great, made even better by sometimes lengthy in-between stories by Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent. The best one was one where they were like “we heard Tom Petty did a Zombies cover, and we listened to it and it was fantastic, even though we didn’t remember the song—I mean we recorded it, allegedly, sixty years ago, who can remember all that—so here’s us doing our best version of Tom Petty doing a song by us.” Just imagine Bill Nighy vamping in Love Actually, with even more charm, and you’ve got it. Plus the song was fantastic.
Exhausted from days of walking, from boats and pocketfuls of coins, I made a mental vow to stay until the end of “This Could Be Our Year,” a lovely bit of music that becomes more beautiful as time goes by. The church looked like this when I left, silhouetted against the darkness. I shivered on the walk back to the hotel.
“THIS COULD BE” is this week’s installment of GORJUS, a newsletter devoted to art and life in the South on instant film. If you like it, consider sending it to a pal. Just like anything, some weeks are better than others. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see more Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.
I wrote recently about my delight in the weather and the coins in “Obscurity Knocks,” but that was about video games, and this is about travel.
This made me laugh and also made my heart fill with joy for you— the delight of summer without humidity.
Brilliant travel writing