I am aboard the boat! I do not know its name, for it is an American name, and American names are usually English names, and I can never remember English names.

I sit in my cabin now, at a small wooden desk beside the bed. There is a small, circular window and I’ve just looked out of it. There is a beautiful sunny sky, not a cloud anywhere to be seen. I shall open the window now.

What fantastic salty air! I have missed the ocean, as there is little ocean in the south of Oregon. Soon, I will be in the fatherland once more, but for now I will enjoy the simple joys of a boat trip! Oh, my poor Adam. All the things you missed! I skimmed through your part of the journal and you never once mention having been on a real boat! I will ride for two today, Adam. I will ride for two.

This reminds me, strangely, of my first boat ride. I will explain:

When I was twelve, as I have said, my mother and father and I took a boat from Dieppe in the north of France to Portsmouth in England, and though it was a short trip I remember it well. When the waves dropped away, revealing the distant beaches of Worthing and Portsmouth to me for the first time, I thought I may have reached heaven before my time. Fortunately it was not so. I will not soon forget the smell of the salty air, the same smell which now fills my cabin.

This is another similarity between Adam and I: our love for travel! It seems, however, that Adam loved to travel a bit less than I, if we are to go on his journal. Always with the complaining! I would complain as well, if I had to walk everywhere I went! Yes, I should be entitled to a complaint or two if I had to construct my own canoe to reach Portsmouth. If we were meant to paddle, God, you would not have invented the steam engine. In fact, everything you’ve made has some purpose - I am sure - but I cannot seem to find the purpose of the United States.

Do not misinterpret my words (I hope I have used this word right, misinterpret), I have a deep love for the wondrous land I have now left permanently behind. I am simply questioning whether there needed to be that particular country upon that particular land. Often I looked upon the forests of Oregon and thought - why must it be Oregon? I bring a pine branch to my nose and think - what value does it bring to needles that they are American? I have seen the Columbia River Gorge, the very same which Adam so desperately wished to see, and I believe I know why. I, too, have an appreciation for the natural world, but I do not see it as an obstacle to be jumped. No, nature to me is the whole world, the people and their creations included. I am able to look at a person to my right and see them for the piece of nature they are, and not for what Adam saw: a blemish. As if humanity were some mistake, some error of fate befalling the Earth. No, I can see a Bavarian cottage and think, there is a product of the Earth, something which came about naturally. How anyone could see differently I cannot understand. Still, I believe I understand our Adam. He is like your first, Lord, the original Adam, for he is confused. Above all, Adam was confused about a world he did not truly see, and with the wool pulled over his eyes, who could blame him? I have had the same wool so recently and so long pulled over mine that I can still feel the threads pushing upon my temples. Yet somehow, I have found hands enough to take my wool off, and Adam died with his on. Some, I’ve found, are content in the darkness. I, myself? I am happy in the light.