Newfoundland: A Place Apart : Lost in Time and Space, a Pristine Island Rich in Stark Beauty and Warm Hearts : By Water, Coves and Clouds of Birds

It is impossible not to confront the Janus nature of the land. Its rivers run clean and clear; its air spins with the breath of honeysuckle. Its interior is a land without litter. Its craggy edges and joints are lodged with deeply religious Protestants and Roman Catholics renowned for their charity and moral excellence. On a sunny day the place seems like heaven.

Yet the incessant storms, the frigid waters, have snuffed countless lives. The people here are children of their beloved enemy, the sea. Often characterized as optimistic fatalists, they are a thick-skinned and gentle stock who exterminated the Beothuk Indians, hunted the great auk--a penguin--to extinction, and brought the pilot whale to the brink.

For 450 years, the economic mainstay was a seemingly inexhaustible supply of saltfish. Now that has been reduced to a slim fraction of the glory days. Not long ago, chief livelihoods included clubbing young seals to death. At present they include mining, damming wild rivers and felling trees. Despite these intrusions into its wilderness, few places survive with such environmental integrity and harmony. The island is Newfoundland.

I wasn’t looking where I was going. Instead, my eyes were sweeping the sky, caught in the sight of seemingly endless skeins and clouds of flickering wings, millions of them--arrow-swift murres, Pillsbury dough-bird puffins with their clown-colored beaks, great-winged gannets flying arabesques betwixt and between until the sky seemed alive with flight.

I continued to paddle as I ogled, until suddenly I heard a thud. It was not more than a tap, really. Looking down I saw I had bumped broadside into Gerald Finger’s kayak, and my heart sunk as I saw him teeter back and forth, and then in a slow-motion roll, he poured into the deep indigo blue waters of the icy North Atlantic.

The words of our guide suddenly spun with my paddle: “A person can only function for five minutes in this water; then he goes numb, helpless.” I positioned my kayak next to Gerald, and reached to him as he grabbed the edge of my boat, almost turning it over in panic. This wasn’t right, I thought, and rocked my hips to maintain balance. We were both saved with the command from our guide, Jim Price: “Richard, move out of the way.”

I dug a few strokes, towards the spume of a humpback whale several hundred yards away, but pulled my eyes back around to watch as Jim and his protege, young Doug Marks--with cool, quick professionalism--lined up on either side of the overturned kayak. Placing a paddle between the upright kayaks as a brace, they pulled Gerald’s boat from the water, drained it, flipped it over and positioned it in the water between them. Then Jim instructed Gerald to pull himself on board as the guides stabilized his craft. In 4 1/2 minutes, Gerald was back on board, the rescue a memory of finesse, and we all continued our paddle to Great Island.

Newfies call it The Rock or the Granite Planet. The explorer Jacques Cartier christened it “the land God gave to Cain.” None does it justice. A garden of wildflowers, a sanctuary for moose and caribou, host to the greatest fish pastures in the world, a landscape of tall trees and hard splendor, Newfoundland is much more than a slate stopper thrust into the bellmouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

It is the 10th largest island in the world, the most easterly land in North America. It turns its back upon the Canadian mainland, barricading itself behind a 300-mile-long western coast as tattered as an old fishing net. Its other coasts all face the grim ocean, and are so slashed and convoluted that they present more than 5,000 miles to the sweep of the “Big Pond,” a favored Newfie name for the Atlantic.

Newfoundland is of the sea, and so I felt there could be no better way to explore the narrow gaps bitten in its foreshore--its coves, bights, inlets, reaches, runs and fiords--than by sea kayak. So it was that I found myself with Canadian Canoe Adventures, traveling through the glacially scoured scapes that define an old land some insist has yet to be found.

Our weeklong sojourn started in July, on Friday the 13th, at Lower Lance Cove on Random Island off the southeastern coast of Newfoundland. The first thing Jim Price, our guide, did was go through our gear and winnow out 75% to be left behind.

“This is not a cruise or a raft trip,” he said. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he spoke.

Besides, as I later discovered, he wanted as much premium space as possible to pack Margie’s (his wife’s) cooking, and for good reason.

When I was properly shaken down to a single change of clothes, I slipped on my sprayskirt (backwards at first) and slid into the percussively sleek, 20-foot blue-and-white fiberglass Seascape tandem kayak. I would be sharing the boat with my wife, Pamela Roberson, a photographer. This was my first time in such a craft, and for the first few minutes I felt like a goose among swans. Finally, though, I got my sea legs and arms and we were off, the bow shedding waves as we paddled east down Smith Sound towards the North Atlantic.

The vexations of the urban, managed world washed away with the water that fell from my paddle blades, and I expanded my chest in the big cold freedom of salty air.

The scenery was exquisite. We cruised along a ripsaw coastline marked with black spruce, stunted fir and gaunt granite walls, past the occasional lobster pot. Arctic terns by the hundreds sailed their sharp chevron wings above us. A tiger swallowtail, Newfoundland’s largest butterfly, fluttered across the bow. After a few leisurely hours, we turned around a barb in the land, Hayden Point (after the captain who wrecked his schooner here), and paddled into a small, protected bay called Gabriel Cove. We were at Thoroughfare, a once-busy outport now abandoned. All that remained was a pelt of tawny grass swept with wild irises, purple lupines, tall meadow-rue, marsh marigolds, daisies and buttercups.

We set up shop, and hiked into the birch and tuckamore to the ruins of a once-active merchant post. Today, picking through the planks and woodchips, we could identify just two former structures: the town sawmill and the steeple of the church. After the little archeological dig, we washed and collected soft water from the small spring that trickled down an alcove just across the inlet from our campfire, and after a dinner of fresh salmon and cod tongues fried in batter, a local delicacy, we made an early retreat to bed.

The next morning, after a nursery-colored sunrise and the alarm clock of a robin singing near my tent, we sat down to a breakfast of fried pancakes, sausage and thick coffee. With a second helping, we looked up to see what appeared to be a black-bearded pirate approaching in a white kayak. It was Mark Dykeman, Jim’s partner, just in time for the second pot of coffee. Working as a construction manager in St. John’s, Newfoundland’s capital, he could only take the weekend off, so he had left at 4 a.m. on this Saturday and kayaked the nine miles to meet us for breakfast.

By mid-morning, under a sky that foretold rain, we were off and paddling across the bay toward another, smaller island, Ireland’s Eye. To get there we had to leave our protected cove and round an exposed stretch of the island that’s lashed by the waters of Trinity Bay. For a moment, I felt we had dialed back a thousand years and were part of that small band of Norse explorers steering high-prowed longboats up to the New Founde Land.

After a few miles, we turned into the snug harbor that once served the town of Ireland’s Eye. It appeared we were paddling into the 17th Century, which is when the town first appeared on maps. Big chimney-potted clapboard houses with mansard roofs and curved dormers perched the cliffs on both sides. Directly in front of us, at the end of the bay, stood a large, white, wooden neo-Gothic Anglican church. But the windows had no eyes here; the pews gave no songs. Ireland’s Eye was a ghost town now. The only living creature we saw was a great bald eagle who swooped over us, glowering with amber eyes, signaling, it seemed, that he was now the mayor and constituency.

The day turned “mauzy.” We parked in front of a blossoming lilac tree and, under an oblique rain, Jim brewed a pot of tea and cooked up a pithy stew packed with dried pieces of a moose he had shot months before. After a dessert of Margie cookies (best I’ve ever tasted; I wished I’d left even more gear behind), we trudged up a dripping-wet overgrown path across a landscape that seemed to have risen overnight from the sea, to explore the burg of Ireland’s Eye.

The town was one of 148 communities in the area resettled in the ‘60s in a governmental effort to centralize population in “growth centers” where public services could more readily be provided. More than 20,000 people were promised new jobs and a better life as they were coerced to move, but mostly the jobs were made of air and sea foam, and the new life was one of psychic and spiritual havoc.

That evening, after a dinner of fresh mussels, Newfie steak (fried baloney), onions and baked potatoes, Jim changed to his roll-necked Guernsey and pulled from his haversack a bottle of Screech, an imported Jamaican rum so named for the reaction its potency tends to produce. After a few swigs, Jim and Mark loosened and told a little of why they entered the outfitting biz. Jim insisted it was “just for the halibut,” while Mark confessed his goal was to someday turn outfitting into a full-time profession, though for now the motto of their tiny company was “Don’t quit your day job.”

On the way back from Ireland’s Eye, Pamela noticed a moving brown speck on shore. We paddled closer, and the fuzzy shape sharpened to a distinct form: a young moose, one of the 70,000 or so that now roam Newfoundland. It didn’t acknowledge our presence, and continued to munch on partridgeberries.

Two days later we were paddling off the wind-swept eastern coast of the Avalon Peninsula, as far east as a paddler can get and still be in North American waters. We were in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve on our way to Great Island, one of the world’s largest puffin rookeries, when I bumped into Gerald’s kayak, sending him into the drink. Gerald took it all in stride, but I couldn’t help but feel he hoped for some sort of revenge. It came minutes later, as we paused in a clangorous cove at Great Island to gawk at the wheeling masses of beer-bellied puffins, black-legged kittiwakes, stubby-winged guillemots, cannon murres and yellow-headed gannets, Newfoundland’s largest sea birds.

I had never seen such a sight. The sky blazed with wings, and as I looked skyward I inadvertently opened my mouth in awe, and immediately felt something foreign drop in. As I spat and wiped myself clean, Gerald’s laughter rose above the squawks of the fowls of the air, as though he knew the gods were just evening the score.

After circumnavigating the much-guanoed Great Island, poking into a sea-carved cave that Jim named the Dragon’s Throat for its esophageal rumblings, and running through a natural sea arch, we paddled back to the mainland, towards the town of La Manche, another abandoned outport.

For the final leg of our kayak exploration, we drove to the other side of Newfoundland, to the 450,000-acre Gros Morne (Big Gloomy) National Park on the primordial coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988, the park has been called the “Galapagos of plate tectonics” because it exposes expanses of the earth’s mantle and various stages of geologic evolutionary history. The park also showcases Newfoundland’s land-conservation policies at their best: an extraordinary wilderness where moose, caribou and black bear can wander completely protected, and people can explore a backcountry without crowds and trash bins.

It was a two-mile peat-bog trek to the put-in at Western Brook Pond. Along the way we passed several insect-eating pitcher plants, the somehow appropriate provincial flower. Once there, the clouds darkened, the wind began to wail and the water whipped itself into whitecaps. This did not look like pleasant paddling weather. But Jim, fearless as a snake charmer, would hear nothing of it and had us launch and begin paddling against the cutting wind up the famous pond.

Western Brook Pond is not really a pond. In typical Newfie understatement, most any lake or large body of water is called a pond. But this was more of a rock-girt fiord, looking like something out of Norway or New Zealand. Ultimately it didn’t matter what you called it; at that moment it was a combing sea of spindrift, and I was paddling in fear of a capsize. Yet, as I paddled toward its gates, mind fogged in fear, I couldn’t help but look up and be stunned by the scenery. The cleft in the mountains ahead looked as though it had been split clean by a giant ax. It was like paddling into a flooded Yosemite Valley, one with no hotels, no galleries, no Laundromats, no tourists.

An hour later, I pulled off the poogies (elbow-long neoprene gloves). We were in the sheltering arms of the beetling cliffs, the wind now at our backs, and the water, while not Formica smooth, was at least forgiving. From here the ride was a pure delight. We passed the dramatic spill of Blue Denim falls on the left; hanging valleys on the right. Then Wood Pond Falls on the left, a cascade falling over 1,500 feet. The dark color of the water beneath us was an indicator of its depth . . . some 540 feet and Arctic cold, 49 degrees Fahrenheit. Then with a few more strokes the canyon made a scimitar turn and we were faced with the piece de resistance of the park, Pissing Mare Falls, the longest and most spectacular falls in Canada, dropping 1,850 feet from the canyon rim.

After 10 miles of paddling, we pulled into the pebble beach at the west end of Western Brook Pond. Not surprisingly, we were the only campers in this quasi-paradise. “Quasi” because though the beauty was nonpareil, the experience was a bit tainted by the black flies . . . thousands of the pesky biters, always ready for a piece of exposed skin, or a ready orifice. But we discovered the cure--Screech, in large doses, taken internally. After a few applications we didn’t feel a thing, until the next morning.

It was late morning by the time we started up the trail. The plan was to hike to the rim of Western Brook Pond, where one of the grandest (and least-seen) vistas in all Newfoundland could be savored, and then return in time to kayak back before dark.

I decided to start out ahead of the others so I would have time to take photos. This was unlike any trail in any national park I had ever seen. A rotting, hard-carved sign pointed westward, the wrong way, from our campsite with the simple designation: “Trail.” It would be the last sign, sure or otherwise, of our whereabouts. Just a few yards from camp, the path vanished in the spongy tuckamore, but it wasn’t cause for alarm since there could only be one way to go--up the U-shaped valley towards the Precambrian walls of the Long Range Mountains (the northernmost extent of the Appalachians). Behind was the pond, and on either side the sheer walls, sharp and sudden as the sides of a box, defied negotiation.

It was an intoxicating hike. Waterfalls materialized out of riven rock, and the views became grander with every step. It was July, yet patches of snow lit up the gray fans of scree in dry lake beds. Then after a couple of hours scrambling up a recent rock slide, I was faced with a decision. I chose the closer of the two routes that presented themselves, the left ravine, and began my assault.

It was quickly apparent I was on the wrong one. The vegetation became denser; there was no way to move forward save to claw upwards, swimming upstream in a river of birch and springy juniper. It was grueling, sweaty work, but I gritted and kept going.

After an hour of hand-to-hand combat, I emerged above the tree line onto a glacial drumlin, and surveyed the landscape. It didn’t look good. The gully I had hoped to scale narrowed into a dark chimney, and the final pitch of 100 feet or so was slippery and sheer, impossible to traverse without ropes and pitons. Then I heard Jim’s voice echoing from across the canyon: “Where are you?” I yelled back, and thought I could see a rustle of trees about a mile down.

“Come down!” Pamela’s voice now reverberated. But I was exhausted and needed a few moments before I could move, so I sat down on a lichen-covered rock and pulled a Mirage chocolate bar from my pocket. As I unwrapped it, I looked back down the valley for the first time in a couple hours, and was stunned by the sight.

Some blessings, I knew, came from Nature, unbidden and unplanned, and this view was one. I imagined that it was the sort of landscape the Maritime Archaic people must have beheld, as they made their way here along the edge of retreating glaciers 10,000 years ago. To my left was the misty veil of the great falls, and above, a bald plateau where I could make out a small herd of barren-ground caribou cooling off on a snow patch.

I could gaze all the way to the end of the snaking pond, and beyond to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the waters infamous as the killing fields for millions of pup seals. It was tranquil now, deep blue, no sign of the red tide. And, as I sat there watching a scene of unmitigated calm, I munched my Mirage bar and reviewed the lineaments of this odd island. There seemed a singular cohesiveness of culture and society here, and a consciousness of unity with the natural world. I deeply admired the Newfoundlanders’ famous traits, traits worn on the sleeve of Jim Price: self-sufficiency, adaptability, daring, absolute endurance, unbounded hospitality (a rare concern for fellow man), an appreciation of wilderness and a good will that triumphs over the futility of life.

The history of the people here is one of foreign exploitation, of interference in the modest goals of feeding and sustaining a healthy family. For centuries they caught or killed what the biblical Great Waters offered as their currency with the world: seals, whales and codfish. But then the world turned against them, condemning the hunting of seals and whales. Simultaneously, foreigners were employing high-tech vessels with sophisticated radar to beat them in the fishing game, and ignoring the voluntary fishing quotas beyond the 200-mile Canadian limits. In 1990, the fall in fish stocks forced the Canadian government to cut its quotas enough to throw 3,000 Newfoundlanders out of work, and scientists insist quotas will have to be cut far more deeply if stocks are to revive.

In recent years, many former sealers, whalers and fishermen turned to logging, but a vocal band of outsiders is again jeering the destruction of a limited resource. Now everything seems to be running short except hard-luck stories. Nonetheless, the resourceful are turning to new sources of income. I couldn’t help but notice on my journey that the island highways are lined with cheap motels, gas station convenience stores, water-slide parks (when there are less than 60 hot swimming days a year) and tacky tourist shops.

Three hours later, we were re-congregated at camp, battening down the hatches. A squall had grabbed my tent and tossed it into the hemlocks, and other bits of light gear were scattered with the wind. The waterfall above us was actually being blown upwards. On the plus side, even the black flies had been blown away. The pond that looked so composed just a few hours earlier was now a stark and wild inebriate.

“We’ve got gale force winds; we can’t kayak. We’re stuck,” Jim announced in a sober tone that was completely unfamiliar to this point. It looked as though we would have to hunker down for the night and wait out the storm, when around the bend appeared the Westbrook 1, the 428-long skiff that regularly carries tourists up to the end of Western Brook Pond. Pamela took out a white windbreaker, attached it to the top of her paddle and waved at the tour boat.

Skipper Charles Reid steered his pitching vessel towards our encampment, then announced over his loudspeaker that it was too rough, he couldn’t make it in; we were on our own. It was daunting news, but then the russet-faced skipper turned the boat around, and somehow backed into our little cover. Quickly we threw on our kayaks and camping gear, and were soon sailing back to safety at the eastern end of the pond.

As the Westbrook 1 cruised amid the swirling wind and water spouts, I climbed topside to take a last look at this uncommon landscape. The canyon was filled with blue tendrils of fog, and cold water sprayed across my glasses, but for a moment the mist cleared and the sun shone through, lighting up the brooding cliffs and the grand falls, turning its spray into a brilliantly waving spectrum of color. It was a magic moment, and I couldn’t but think that the entire scene looked like a mirage.

GUIDEBOOK: Newfoundland

Newfoundland’s tourist industry is young and its summer season is brief. That adds up to a shortage of accommodations. Early planning is essential if you don’t want to be disappointed.

Getting there: Access to Newfoundland is by plane or ferry. Both of Canada’s major airlines have regular service from Los Angeles into St. John’s, Newfoundland (not to be confused with nearby Saint John, New Brunswick). Air Canada flies twice daily from Los Angeles with one stop for a change of planes in Toronto. Round-trip fares booked at least 21 days in advance begin at $565, including airport taxes. Canadian Airlines has daily service with two stops, but its schedule requires an overnight en route in either Vancouver or Toronto.

Big, comfortable Marine Atlantic ferries sail from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland, three times during most days in summer. Ferries sail twice a week from North Sydney to Argentia, on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula. Telephone for reservations: (902) 794-5700.

Where to stay:

St. John’s: There are 17 B&Bs; or guest houses here, most in restored Victorian homes. Prices range from $35-$90. The Compton House, 26 Waterford Bridge Road, (709) 739-5789, is spacious and elegantly appointed. Also recommended are the Prescott Inn Bed and Breakfast, (709) 753-6036, and the Victoria Station Inn, (709) 722-1290. There are several fine hotels, including the Radisson Plaza Hotel (120 New Gower St., 709-739-6404); the Stel Battery Hotel (100 Signal Hill Road, 709-576-0040); Captain’s Quarters (2 King’s Bridge Road, 709-576-7173), and the Hotel Newfoundland (Cavendish Square, 709-726-4980). Hotel rates vary from $50-$150 double.

Holiday Inns are located in St. John’s, Clarenville, Gander and Corner Brook. They fill up fast in summer. Prices range from about $78 double in Clarenville to about $96 double in St. John’s. Call (800) 465-4329 or (709) 722-0506.

Outside St. John’s: In Corner Brook, the Glynmill Inn is a pleasant hotel with a very good dining room. Doubles, $65-$70. Call (709) 634-5181.

A directory available from the Newfoundland tourist office lists hospitality homes throughout the province. Suggestions: Barbara Mercer’s Galecliff Home at Upper Island Cove, a big comfortable house on the sea, about $45 double, (709) 589-2230; Mrs. Kitty Sullivan’s guest room in Calvert, traditional Newfoundland fare and lots of lore, (709) 432-2474; Seven Oakes Tourist Home at Change Islands, glorious views, good food, big rooms on the second floor, about $45.

Where to eat: Upon arrival in St. John’s, head down to the Flakehouse in Quidi Vidi for a feed of fresh cod--the classic harbor view and the Atlantic beyond are reminders that this is not the office. For simple fish ‘n’ chips, check out King Cod or Ches’s. As its name implies, Duckworth Lunch is open at lunchtime. West of town, in the Upper Island Cove area, an excellent bet for dinner is the aforementioned Barbara Mercer’s Galecliff Home (phone ahead to make sure she’s expecting you). Farther afield, brake for the Albatross Inn in Gander--maybe one-third of the distance on a cross-island road trip. And when finally reaching saltwater again at Corner Brook, a meal at the Glenmill Inn is a just reward.

Kayaking: If you’re with a reliable outfitter, no experience is needed for cold-water sea kayaking. Canadian Canoe Adventures operates sea-kayak tours (four days kayaking, six days total) to Random Island and the sea bird sanctuaries every week in July. An add-on to Gros Morne can be arranged. Price of $649 per person (based on double occupancy) includes ground transport, all meals except day of arrival, three overnights at local inns, kayaking and camping equipment, and guides throughout.

Contact Canadian Canoe Adventures, 159 Main St., Unionville, Ontario, L3R 2G8 Canada, (416) 479-2601. Another outfitter is Eastern Edge Outfitters, P.O. Box 13981, St. John’s, Newfoundland, A1B 4G8 Canada, (709) 368-9720.

For more information: Contact Newfoundland Tourism, P.O. Box 8730, St. John’s, Newfoundland, A1B 4K2 Canada, (800) 563-6353.