Wed 31 Jul 2019
We got up and had a leisurely breakfast, enjoying more than half a day relaxing around the lovely campsite at Shallow Bay and doing battle with the mosquitos.
Newfoundland mosquitos are huge, dozy and rigorously fair. Not for them a rapid in-and-out and the dirty deed is done. No, they are like the slowest aliens in a game of Space Invaders. You see them coming for ages, plenty of warning. But they are so ponderous that you underestimate their threat. Whilst you concentrate on more urgent affairs (such as stopping your kettle of boiling water from sliding off your single-ring campstove), they make their way closer ... slowly ... gradually. Then they are upon you ... but still so unhurried that you barely notice them. At your peril, you forget to flick or squish, and that is it: they’ve got you at last. Our lovely neighbour from home says, “The Good Lord may be slow, but he is thorough.” Not for me to draw a similarity between the The Good Lord and a Newfoundland mosquito, but you get my drift.
Dave was feeling unwell today, showing signs of a slight touch of sunstroke. It has been unexpectedly warm for a few days, particularly where we sat at lunch time yesterday, but Newfoundland was still the last place we’d think of for such an ailment. (Meanwhile, the girls continue to refuse to take off their fleeces in the hot sun so we are starting a ‘Release the Fleece’ campaign.)
Despite being unwell, Dave took a short (1.5 mile round-trip) morning walk from the campsite south along the Old Mail Road through trees parallel to the ocean and back along the white sandy shore edged with dunes, a route that Poppy and I copied this evening. The short section we walked is part of a much longer (140 mile) trail from Bonne Bay to St Anthony at the northern end of Newfoundland’s largest peninsula, which was, for many years, the only land connection between the communities here. From the 1880s to the early 1950s, winter couriers delivered mail along this route using dog teams or horses, crossing thin ice, wading through freezing water, battling storms and taking shelter in homes along the way. It wasn’t until the 1950s that a highway was finally built.
Steve's Trail and the graveyard at Sandy Cove.
Mid-afternoon, we drove a little south to Broom Point Fish Store and Cabin. We walked out along the short Steve’s Trail for a sea view and to collect and eat some little wild strawberries, and also to the adjacent Sandy Cove viewpoint, where we looked inside the tiny fenced graveyard with just four white gravestones still standing and a plaque listing the names from the missing stones, all dating from the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was an isolated and desolate spot and I felt melancholy as I thought about the transience of life and read the inscriptions – a man in his 50s, two teenage girls and 19 children under six years old, the same surnames coming up again and again. The Short family had lost three young daughters one after another. I read the dates closely and, with daughters of my own, it made me unbelievably sad. The first, Sarah Ann, had died at 20 months, when her older sister, Susannah, was nearly four and her mother pregnant with another child (who turned out to be daughter Elizabeth). Within two years, Susannah too had perished just before reaching her sixth birthday, and it was only Elizabeth left, aged 18 months. She got past 20 months, but then passed away when she was 4½ years old. How does any parent cope?
On a happier note, the ranger-guided tour we took around the buildings at Broom Point was excellent. It turned out to be just us four, so, in effect, we had a private tour. The restored 1960s cabin was small and cosy, with three tiny double bedrooms located around a tiny open-plan area for cooking, washing and sitting round the range, and it housed three couples with four children between them. The oldest child slept on a makeshift bed in the living area and the other children slept on bunks constructed above the double beds.
The cabin was only used for a few months each year during the summer fishing season (for 35 years in the mid-20th century), when everyone, men, women and children alike, would be involved in net-making and catching and preserving fish for sale (via the boat that rotated in turn round the different ports). The cod was salted and dried, the salmon canned on site, and the lobsters crated and shipped out alive. During the long winter, all the families moved back to their separate homes in the community further south, and the journey up to and back from Broom Point was made by boat. (Further back in time, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, Broom Point was a small, sometimes seasonal fishing community, and, long ago – 300 BC to 600 AD – a base for spring seal hunts by Palaeo-Eskimos.)
The cabin (white) and fish store (dark) at Broom Point. Good day for drying the washing!
Normally, I might think of conditions in the cabin as basic and cramped. But living, as we are this year, four of us for 2½ months in a small tent and the open air, come rain or shine, sleeping on the hard ground, cooking on a single-ring, fold-up gas stove, frequently finding ourselves with long-drop toilets and no showers, the summer cabin instead felt unexpectedly luxurious with all 1960s mod-cons!
The thing that really engaged May and Poppy, however, was the fishing hut and fish store. They were intrigued by how the lobster pots worked and how the nets were woven. So genuine was their interest that the ranger happily spent ages showing them exactly how to measure out, start, knot and finish the nets, and the girls watched and learnt eagerly, querying any detail that wasn’t totally clear. The ranger then sent them off with a 3” net size guide that he quickly whipped up out of a piece of wood and instructions on where to buy a fishing needle each in Rocky Harbour. (Within two days, the girls had purchased needles and begged some fishing twine and, an hour later, had fully constructed a netted hammock high across the ceiling of the car.)
We have fantastic campsite neighbours here, Pam and Bob. They have lived in various parts of Canada over the years, including Newfoundland and Goose Bay in Labrador, and currently live in mainland Canada and are on holiday in Newfoundland in their caravan for a few weeks. We’ve had lots of friendly chats and they have been so generous in loaning us bits and pieces: an axe (yesterday) for Dave to reduce some of our wood to kindling, a big, solid washing-up bowl (instead of our own tiny, fold-up bowl) for some handwashing so we can eke out our underwear until we reach laundry facilities at the long-awaited Berry Hill campsite, acrylic paints so that the girls can have a bit of fun painting stones to hide as ‘rock art’.
After tea, we got a small campfire going in the grate for melting marshmallows and giving out a bit of evening warmth. Dave had suffered from preparing the kindling, including hitting his finger (more bruised than cut) and getting a nasty blister from the axe handle, so we were looking forward to the well-deserved fruits of his labour. The girls went off to find and prepare their marshmallow sticks by selecting a straight, green (living) twig each and using their fingernails to strip off the bark at the cooking end and leave an unstripped ‘handle’ at the holding end. The twigs must always come from a deciduous, not evergreen, tree, so I reminded them to avoid the coniferous trees. May turned back, horrified.
“Mummy, there aren’t really any, are there?”
“Aren’t any what?” I asked, puzzled.
She looked around, worriedly, dropping her voice to a fearful whisper. “Carnivorous trees?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Newfoundland might have its share of carnivorous plants (indeed, its flower emblem, the pitcher plant, is carnivorous) ... but full-sized carnivorous trees? I would not be sleeping easy in our tent at night.
We all gathered around our little campfire. We had no chairs, so May sat on a small log and Poppy sat on a homemade stool formed from an upturned log with a thick topping of dried grass. The fire was burning brightly, and then – fizzle, splutter – it suddenly died in the grate for no apparent reason, leaving dry, unburned wood and kindling, and would not be restarted.
I suppose it didn’t really matter. The marshmallows had been left in a bag in the back window of the car in the hot sun for several days and most had already melted into a single, sticky mass, without any need of toasting over a fire. Poppy happily reached in and pulled off several handfuls.
We pulled our coats about us for warmth, and popped across to Pam and Bob’s for a short evening chat about this and that. Out of the blue, they suddenly told us that they had taught their children to widdle when they were young. Dave and I were startled, and couldn’t think what to say. Surely all parents teach their children this most basic of life skills. Perhaps we hadn’t heard right, but what on earth could they actually have said? There was a slight pause, which grew into a longer pause. Finally, seeming to sense our confusion, they repeated and expanded, “Yes, we taught them to widdle sticks ... with a knife.” Oh.
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