Road to The Saguenay Fjord

“The road is life.”

So wrote Jack Kerouac in his classic 1950s novel On the Road. And as my 650 Suzuki V-Strom and I boarded a ferry on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, I had occasion to consider a few metaphors of my own. I was crossing from Rivière-du-Loup to Saint-Siméon, northeast of Quebec City, because I had heard tell of an actual fjord fed by the Saguenay River which, while little known, was in fact one of the longest in the world.

There were few passengers on the ferry, and most seemed to have done this crossing before: in the cabin, they watched the TV news or scrolled through their phones. I, on the other hand, was wide-eyed out on the windy deck, gaping at the approaching Laurentian Mountains. I was standing on my tiptoes, straining to see over the bow of the ship, when I heard a little voice in my head: You look like a silly tourist — are they staring at you? Throwing a glance over my shoulder, I pushed back: When did you learn to be I stretched a little — an act more defining than it seemed.