|
|---|
|
Mist and moose and mountains and more...
August-September, 1997
We are sitting on top of a hill looking out over sun-splattered Bonne Bay, talking to "JJ", a rotund and friendly young actor and telesalesman who we found already ensconced here, spotting moose as they wander in and out of the tuckamore, and watching a boat carve a V out of the mirror-calm inlet below us. This is Newfoundland.
Our first stop after a nightmare ferry journey from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, was J.T. Cheeseman provincial park, west of Channel Port aux Basques, that was crammed with mosquitoes and blackflies. But help was at hand from hundreds of pitcher plants that grow in nearby bogs and gobble insects by the million.
From then onwards, however, thanks to the Newfoundland climate, we saw scarcely a bug, most of them having either died of hypothermia, or drowning, or being blown out to sea.
As we drove north out of Port aux Basques we passed a forlorn row of railway trucks and equipment (destined to become a railway museum), a reminder that there are now no railways in Newfoundland, the rails having been ripped up with indecent haste in 1988. Trucks, as a result, rule the highways. This creates a new (to me) kind of noise pollution: the countryside here is so quiet at night that you can hear trucks coming and going from miles away, and the peace is shattered by an almost constant roar of big diesel engines from far away. The railway track bed remains, wandering across the inhospitable interior. What a wonderful tourist/enthusiast line this would have made, taking people where the road doesn't go...
Gros Morne
We drove north to Gros Morne National Park, a place of various attractions — foggy inlets, forest; bogs; the toxic rocks of the tablelands, bare of vegetation; the small communities it surrounds, like Trout River (when we saw it filled with flags at half mast, recognising the death of a local personage, and washing lines, flapping with colourful, neatly arranged garments, the trousers, the shirts, the red and pink knickers, the socks all paired); Western Brook Pond, an ice-age glacier-cut slice through ancient rocks already split by crystalline dykes. We camped for two nights at the excellent campground in Trout River, spent a rainy day in a cabin, working on web stuff, at Cow Head and then moved to Shallow Bay campground, where Lenore stripped almost naked in the sun (who knows how long it will be before we see a lot more of this?).
Port au Choix
JJ caught us up at Shallow Bay campground — we'd offered him a lift up the northern peninsula. Despite the glorious day it began to rain as we crawled into our tents. It was raining hard when we got to Port au Choix next day. We visited the brand new archaeological centre, then met Elizabeth Plowman-Waters, an ex work colleague, Mayor of Port au Choix, splendid person, who put us up and shared some of her knowledge of these parts. We saw her father's fishing boat, stripped of paint and about to be fibre-glassed. We saw the Portuguese fishing boat, with its beautiful curved lines, that had been arrested and impounded whilst smuggling. We saw the glum, rotting vessels on the edge of the boatyard, one of which will, next year, be mounted by the highway to attract tourists to Port au Choix (the port where fishers could choose which of three harbours they would moor their boats) .
L'Anse aux Meadows
Then, in the drizzle and a chill breeze from the north, we visited L'Anse aux Meadows, the Bay of Jellyfish, where, a thousand years ago, some Norse people constructed a few turf houses, forged some boat nails from bog iron, dropped a bronze pin with a ring in it (an artifact that literally made history, confirming to archaeologists that nordic people were here at least 400 years before Cabot) and then sailed away again.
Was this then-milder spot generously named Vinland? Or was it just a brief staging post? Standing in the grey cold rain it was easy to imagine (or invent) the depression of these pioneers, far from home, threatened by strange natives, surrounded by brooding wilderness.
We felt as if we were on the edge of the world, despite the Pontiac Grand-Am parked just beside the replica huts.
The weather encouraged us to spend a night at Storehouse Bed-and-Breakfast in Plum Cove, where our host was the loquacious landlord Roland , who would never stop talking...
Next day we reluctantly (for he was good company) dropped JJ off in Deer Lake (he was heading west to catch a plane from Stephenville and on to Toronto and his new lodgings with a wiccan — people have such fascinating stories). Then we drove to Indian River Campground, a recently-privatized Provincial Park, where we spent two nights, the first of which as the only campers in this pleasant riverside park.
The reason we stayed two nights was that we drove the Boethuk Trail, a Y-shaped route that took us out to Harry's Harbour and Triton. In Harry's Harbour we discovered a little museum spilling out of an old store. It is a wonderful, dusty collection of old stuff, from the store ledgers to coffin furniture. In the house behind the museum is more. With more than two visitors the museum is crowded, but we loved it.
Contradicting the poverty of this island, Triton and nearby Brighton are filled with expensive new houses. Hmmm. I wanted to visit Lushes Bight, just because of its name, but we just missed a ferry... On to Terra Nova National Park, Canada's easternmost, where we almost trod on a moose, and then to St. John's
St John's
We sat and listened and enjoyed as Fergus O'Byrne sang in the Erin's Bar, where I drank not-bad Guiness.
In St John's they have a newspaper called The Evening Telegraph that comes out in the morning. Hmmmmm.
| top of page |