Tue 06 – Wed 07 Aug 2019
‘Sweet Sixteen and Never Been Kissed.’ More accurately, eighteen rather than sixteen (years since we first came to Newfoundland) and (in our three visits) we’ve never yet kissed a cod. And why would anyone want to? It’s all part of the ‘screech in’ ceremony for non-Newfoundlanders (‘come from aways’) to become honorary Newfoundlanders. Guided by a local in a sou’wester hat, you recite a short saying, kiss a cod and swallow a shot of screech (rum). Sounds O.K., I suppose, apart from the cod and the screech.
Most of us didn’t manage any breakfast on Tuesday morning, after two days of eating three cooked main meals per day. Instead, we packed up some sandwiches for lunch and set off by car to the Tablelands. Although far easier than when we attempted the journey on foot 18 years ago, it made clear just how useful the passenger ferry is: a journey of 6 miles as the crow flies turned out to be nearly 50 miles by road around the fjords of Bonne Bay, and took well over an hour.
We headed to the short ‘Tablelands Trail’ to take a guided walk with ranger, Cedric, up to the valley entrance of Winter House Brook Canyon. I have mentioned previously that the Tablelands are geologically special. Cedric was to explain why. He was one of the best guides we have ever had: passionate to ensure that he didn’t just pass across a few random facts, but, through the use of creative visualisations, enabled everyone in his group to glean a real understanding of what they were seeing. (Zach and Kay turned out to know him, of course.)
With the aid of a few children and some rocks, he explained that the Tablelands are one of less than a handful of places in the world where a section of the earth’s mantle has popped up intact above the continental crust (the others being in Papua New Guinea, Cyprus and Oman). This is different from the mantle coming up explosively as volcanic lava, as the movement and cooling is different. Explosive volcanic lava forms air-pocked, light pumice at the surface. But, where a whole lump of mantle has popped up, it is composed of a dense green-black peridotite. This oxidises to an orange-brown colour characteristic of the Martian-looking landscape of the Tablelands and often develops a snakeskin-mottled surface (white veins on green-black) called serpentinite and caused by the different solubilities of the minerals making up the peridotite.
So what went on here? Oceanic crust (that’s the earth’s crust that lies under the ocean) is more dense than continental crust (the earth’s crust that forms the land) – that’s why it’s oceanic crust: being denser, it sits lower on the earth’s surface and water puddles on the top as ocean. When the two types of crust collide as part of plate tectonics, the denser oceanic crust usually subducts (goes under) the continental crust. But something different happened in the Tablelands. The old supercontinent of Gondwana (present-day Africa, South America, India, Australia and Antarctica) collided with the old North American supercontinent of Laurentia, and a small pocket of oceanic crust (plus its underlying mantle) popped upwards instead, then tipped over northwards onto its side, landing with the oceanic crust to the north and the mantle to the south.
Glaciers later slid down the east-west join and, across 30 main glacial periods, gouged out a large U-shaped valley, with ‘California’ on one side of the valley (barren mountains of amber-coloured mantle) and ‘Scandinavia’ on the other (lush, green, vegetated mountains formed from oceanic crust). The road linking Woody Point and Trout River runs down this U-shaped valley, making for a spectacularly scenic drive. If you look down the valley eastwards into the distance beyond Bonne Bay, you can even see pink-tinged Gros Morne mountain at the southern end of the Long Range Mountains, comprising granite and quartzite from the continental crust. What a lesson in geology!
And when did all this happen? Cedric stretched his two arms out sideways as a timeline, right fingertips representing the beginning of the earth 4.5 billion years ago, left fingertips representing now. “This is when the Long Range Mountains were formed,” he said, and immediately dropped his left arm at the elbow. Back up came the arm, then he dropped his left hand at the wrist, “And this is when the Tablelands were formed, 500 million years ago.” Back up came the hand. “And this bit,” he pointed to the end of his left hand, “This tiny distance between the ends of my fingernails and the rounded ends of my fingers, that is when the glaciers came. In geological time, the glaciers happened a blink of an eye ago.”
The Tablelands are only sparsely vegetated because of the heavy metals in the mantle rocks, which correspondingly means very little soil. We saw a few small alders (which tend to do well where there has been upheaval) and a few juniper and larch. There were also some carnivorous plants – the Newfoundland pitcher plant and some smaller species – which exist here because they don’t obtain their trace nutrients from the poor, patchy soil, but by trapping insects. Cedric said that pitcher plants are the provincial flower emblem because they are just like Newfoundlanders: beautiful, strong and they love to eat meat!
Originally from Quebec, Cedric was fluently bilingual, delivering seamlessly in both English and French, before demonstrating a further talent by suddenly pulling out a mouth organ as he stood next to a pitcher plant with the Tablelands as a backdrop, and serenading the group with the provincial anthem, Ode to Newfoundland, which he then faultlessly transitioned into I's the B'y, a merry Newfoundland jig.
Walking the short Tablelands Trail; quilted fabric pitcher plant in the visitor centre.
After that, we headed off for a look at Trout River – an archetypal Newfoundland village situated at the mouth of the eponymous river – then slightly inland to a viewpoint over Trout River Pond. This is another landlocked fjord, a little like Western Brook Pond. Once upon a time, there would have been three fjords in what is now Gros Morne National Park, but Bonne Bay remains the only true (seawater) fjord. Overlooking Trout River Pond, we got chatting with the only other people around, a family from Vermont in the USA. They were inspirational, about to hike off for some backcountry camping with their three-year-old daughter (whose first backcountry camping trip came when she was just 5 weeks old and who had, a few days ago on Newfoundland's Blow Me Down Mountain, seen a bear chasing a caribou ... or was it the other way around?). With both parents working in environmental conservation and advocacy, we learnt something of the difficulties of working in this field in the USA under the Trump administration as well as an inkling of the truth behind Canada’s apparently wholesome environmental image – in such a vast, sparsely-populated country, it is not difficult to imagine that more goes on than meets the eye.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] Trout River village; boats beside Trout River; Trout River Pond.
We headed back to the little village of Woody Point (hard to believe that this tiny place was once the main supply port for the whole west coast of Newfoundland) and found a store where we could buy some wine and beers as a thankyou for Zach and Kay. After we paid for our purchases, May went to pick up a bottle to help us carry it to the car. The cashier immediately said that she wasn’t allowed as she was under 19 years old. It seems that, in Canada, not only can you not drink or buy alcohol until aged 19, but also you cannot even touch or carry it in a sealed bottle – and, if you are with a parent, that parent can be charged by the police.
How ridiculous – I’d like to see the evidence that preventing a child from helping their parents carry the shopping (May doesn’t care what’s inside) has reduced Canada’s drink problems and alcoholism. In counterpoint to its archaic alcohol laws, Canada legalised cannabis even for recreational use from 2018 ... although perhaps not for children!
Back at Zach and Kay’s for dinner, we tucked into a huge meal of steak, with a pudding of freshly picked strawberries. Kay’s friend, Pat, popped over to say hello. It turned out that she was the woman on the beach with Kay at Lobster Cove Head in May 2008, the day we’d gone down to the beach and started asking, out of the blue, if they happened to know Zach. Pat needed to assure herself, after all these years, that May had actually survived the miserable weather we’d exposed her to!
Wednesday was the day we were to leave Newfoundland. We reflected on our visit. With peninsula after peninsula, Newfoundland has a land area almost equal to that of England, yet a population of less than one-hundredth (0.5 million compared with 56 million in England). Most of the population (originally based on a fishing economy) is still located in coastal communities around the extensive, rugged coastline. Historically connected by sea transport, there is now a sparse road network following the north and west coasts and circling the Avalon peninsula in the far south-east, yet a striking sense of emptiness and isolation still pervades.
Perhaps because of the isolation and general need to be independent, Newfoundlanders carry a strong sense of individual responsibility. Yes, things can sometimes be disorganised and inefficient, but the individuals are on your side and only too willing to help. When it really matters, the right things happen. Newfoundlanders are always down to earth, ready to ‘muck in’ and don’t take themselves too seriously, and they radiate a genuine warmth and friendliness rarely equalled anywhere in the world (and which seems to rub off on the visitors too whilst they are there).
The intoxicating, mind-expanding, bleak beauty of their homeland, combined with the historic need to create their own amusements, has no doubt been a driving force behind the wealth of musical and artistic talent found amongst Newfoundlanders – whether rustic crafts, quilting or Irish-style (they’d say Newfoundland-style) country music based on the accordian, violin, guitar and vocals with the idiosyncratic ugly stick thrown in for good measure, the Newfoundlanders really know how to enjoy themselves.
We drove away from Zach and Kay’s house and headed straight to the little, low-key airport at Deer Lake. Signs were up reminding people that it is illegal to take cannabis into other countries. May misread them as being ‘illegal to take cannibals into other countries’. Yes, Newfoundland is different from most places, but not quite THAT different!
Looking down on the landscape from the aeroplane, in the 30 mile stretch from Deer Lake to the west coast, we counted over 100 ponds of all different sizes, saw rivers twisting and snaking, rocky barrens and patches of dense greenery ... and almost no sign whatsoever of human habitation.
This remote, craggy, boggy, desolate, beautiful island with its immensely hospitable people had captured our hearts twice before. It had done so all over again. We would surely be back.
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