The Boat Ride Itself
A Cautionary Tale
July 2023. It’s my 40th birthday. I’m with my wife, staying in the little fairyland village of Rastoke, Croatia. As a gift, she has bought us tickets to Plitvice Lakes National Park. The gift not a surprise – it’s exactly why we’re here – but it’s incredibly exciting regardless.
It’s a short drive from where we’re staying, and we stop along the way to buy breakfast and fruit. As the destination nears, we’re increasingly flustered about missing the turning and concerned about where’s best to park, but soon – those worries behind us – we head off on foot, find the entrance, and show the park people our tickets.
We enter to find a landscape unlike any we have ever seen. Mile upon mile of boardwalk on water, of weathered wooden pathways on bright blue lakes. Currents rush underfoot and waterfalls fall, above and below, making misty rainbows in the morning summer sun. Wherever we stop to look closer, there is always something to find. A school of fish, a crooked old tree, a hidden cave in the distance. The sun is hot, the waters are inviting, and we speak longingly of what it might be like to swim here, but swimming is strictly forbidden. We explore the park for hours. It is beautiful.
Towards the end of our visit, we stumble upon the docks, where boats pick up passengers and carry them to some unseen shore. There’s a bottleneck of visitors here, and we’re ready to leave the park by this point, since we’ve nearly completed the route we set out to take. We consider our options and resign to wait, but the wait itself is long. We see three or four boats arrive, fill up and leave again before we can board one ourselves.
The boat is a small, flat-decked passenger ferry. Open-sided, canopy-topped, about twenty seats. We sit down and set off across the lake, intrigued to see where the boat will take us. We’re shaded on board and there’s a gentle breeze. We talk about the day so far and speculate over where the boat is going. Minutes pass – ten, twenty? – and the boat arrives at a dock on the other side of the lake.
We leave the boat, walk up a small flight of wooden steps, and look around. We double-check our maps. This can’t be right, can it? But it is. The boat has not taken us to a beautiful distant shore. The boat has taken us to the park exit. This isn’t too far from where we boarded – we could have happily walked here, in fact we very nearly did. Why has the boat taken us to the exit?
Then the confusion lifts. We thought the point of the boat ride was to take us somewhere, but we were wrong. The point of the boat ride was the boat ride itself. We were supposed to enjoy the boat ride itself.
A kind of mournful panic sets in. Wait, wait! Maybe there were beautiful views, maybe the whole experience was in fact delightful. We try to enjoy it in hindsight but it’s too late. We were elsewhere.
And so it came to pass that one of the gifts I received for my 40th birthday was a metaphor – how apt for a writer to receive such a thing! – and I cherish it still to this day. The metaphor stands for mortality – a journey to an exit – and the lesson was timely for a fella-turned-forty: enjoy the boat ride itself.
Pay attention to the boat ride itself.